


I'll Follow You Into The Dark

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, Sad Ending, Season 08 through Season 12, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 11:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30004023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: After Meg's death, Castiel is decided to find out where she went and, if possible, to bring her back.
Relationships: Castiel/Meg Masters
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a belated birthday present for my friend Mary!Happy birthday, I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Title taken from the Death Cab For Cutie song.

"Dean..."

Dean stopped dead in his tracks. His stare was like fire over Castiel's skin, hurting more than any blade.

"You have something to say to me?" he asked.

"I..." Castiel started, but he couldn't go on. He thought he knew what fury was and what it felt to be on the receiving end of it.

He was wrong.

"You ran away with the Tablet, because you didn't trust us?" Dean asked. "Because you didn't trust me?"

"I had to..." Castiel mumbled, but he already knew Dean wouldn't be interested in any of his excuses. They sounded empty even to his own ears.

"You left us behind," Dean spat. "With Crowley. You left Meg behind."

"Dean," Sam tried to intervene, but her name had sparked something different in Castiel. Something other than the embarrassment and the shame. Something cold and terrible, deep in his gut, something he already knew was true.

"What happened to Meg?" he asked, every word of that question rasping in his throat as he said them out loud. "Dean, what happened...?"

"She's dead, Castiel."

He didn't hear what he said next. Something about Crowley and a blade. Something about how they had to leave her there, laying in the cold pavement, to run away from the King of Hell. Something about how he had failed her.

He didn't need to hear it. He already knew.

"... I thought you at least cared about her!"

"Dean!" Sam said, a little louder.

Castiel's legs didn't seem to hold him anymore. If he had been a little less upset, he would've reflected on how strange that was. Four years ago, when he'd first taken control of that body, it had felt alien to him. He felt his emotions in his grace, in his mind. But at some point during his life on Earth, cut off from Heaven, he'd got used to that skin, to those bones. His grace had made connections to his veins, to the mess of nerves in his guts.

That was why he'd felt them so light when Meg had smiled at him. That was why they'd burned when he had her in his arms.

That was why they were heavy as led now, sinking him down along with his despair.

Dean turned his back on him and left the library. Castiel managed to sink into a chair. The pain was going up from his guts to his chest now, to his throat and the back of his eyes. Everything swirled around him.

Sam's hand was on his shoulder.

"Cas, I'm sorry. He... he shouldn't have told you like that..."

"Is it...?" Castiel croaked and had to stop. The air in his lungs helped, but the heaviness didn't go away at all. "Is it true?"

There was no anger in Sam's eyes, but the pity in them was almost worse.

"I'm sorry. She... she went up against him to get us some time. To get you..."

"She was weakened by the torture," Castiel remembered, swallowing to try to undo the lump in his throat. “She never should have…”

“I don’t think I could have stopped her,” Sam said. “She was… she was fighting for you. Before she went up to Crowley, she said…”

“No.” Castiel’s fear had become panic now, a paralyzing feeling that he couldn’t stop. “No, don’t.”

Because whatever she had said to Sam, he didn’t think he could handle hearing it. He could still see her hand on his as he bandaged her wounds, the smile in her lips when he’d said…

“I’m so sorry, Cas.”

He dared to look at Sam for the first time and the tiny spark of anger that he didn’t even realize was growing inside him goes extinct immediately. He sees the guilt in Sam’s face. He’d asked him to watch out for her, but they both knew that if pushed came to shove, Sam would try and save Dean. And if Meg was really decided to do anything, there was no power on Heaven and Hell that could stop her.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said, because the silence was too overwhelming. Because he needed to fill it up with something.

He stood up. He didn’t even know where he was going, or what he was going to do. All he knew was that those feelings in his gut, in the back of his mind, were all subsiding now and he just felt… nothing.

Nothing at all.

An emptiness where the warmth caused by Meg’s smile used to be. A dark that threatened to consumed him whole if he didn’t at least move, if he didn’t at least attempt to…

There was no way to fix it.

Was there?

* * *

Crowley’s bones broke easily under his hands. The King of Hell, so self-assured and composed when Castiel had found him, was finally coming undone.

“Alright, alright!” he yelled out. “I’m sorry about your girlfriend! I don’t know what you want me to…?”

Castiel kicked him on the stomach, hard enough for ribs to break. Crowley yelped and spat out blood on the floor, crawling away from Castiel as far as his chains allowed him to.

“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” Castiel said. The nothingness in his stomach had turned to steel. It felt heavy, but it kept him standing. It kept him fighting through the grief and the anger. It kept his head cool when all he wanted to do was burn the world down and himself with it.

He came closer to Crowley and stomped his foot down over his fingers. Crowley howled as Castiel dug his heel, pulverizing his bones under it.

“Then what do you want?!” Crowley shouted.

Castiel crouched down to look at his face. It was bloated and bloodied, one eye shut tight and swollen. Dean had told him they needed the King alive. He’d never asked him to be particularly careful.

“I want an answer,” Castiel said, putting his hand on Crowley’s shoulder. “Where do you go?”

Crowley took in a gulp of air.

“I don’t know.”

“Wrong answer.”

Castiel sank his fingers, squashing the King’s shoulder blade. It shattered under his grip. The pain in Crowley’s screams brought him no joy and, in fact, he was starting to get impatient. He hadn’t thought it would be easy to break Crowley, considering who he was, but Castiel was methodical. Slow. Strategic in his choice of where to kick, and where to punch, and where to crush.

But he still wasn’t hearing what he wanted to know.

“Where do demons go when you die?” he asked again, for what felt like the hundredth time. “You are souls corrupted by the darkness of Hell. Souls can’t be destroyed; they can’t be eliminated. So, where… do you… go?”

“I don’t know!” Crowley bellowed. “Nobody knows!”

“I don’t believe you.”

Castiel stood up glaring down at Crowley, watching him whimper and coward at his feet.

“Someone has to know,” he said.

Crowley stifled a sob.

“Maybe the old ones,” he answered. “Yellow Eyes. Lilith. But _I don’t know_.”

There. That was an answer different from the pathetic ones he had been offering so far. Castiel took that as a win.

“You know who they are. The older demons left in this earth. Don’t you?”

Crowley dragged himself to the edge of the Devil’s Trap. He curled up there and closed his eyes.

“Just kill me,” he said. “Just get it over with.”

“As much as I would like to do that… and believe me, I would,” Castiel growled. “You still have some usefulness left in you. Tell me who the other demons are. You have to know. You wouldn’t like them defying your claim to the Throne, would you?”

Crowley looked at him with something other than arrogance or terror in his eyes. Something akin to pride. To respect.

“Well, you’re finally thinking like…”

Castiel kicked him hard enough that Crowley rolled over and landed on his back with another moan. Castiel placed his foot over his chest, pressing ever so slightly. Just a warning that he could choose to do so much more damage if Crowley kept bullshitting him.

“Tell me who they are. And tell me where to find them.”

Crowley cried a bit more, but then he started rattling out names.

“Abaddon. You could have asked that bitch if your boy toys hadn’t let her escape. Ramiel. He has a farmhouse in Michigan. He doesn’t like being disturbed. I know Dagon and Asmodeous are alive as well, but I couldn’t track them.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” Castiel sank his feet ever so slightly. “Anyone else?”

Crowley looked up at him and hesitated. Castiel pressed further down, until the rib he had cracked earlier started to feel the pressure and sent another shot of pain through Crowley’s body.

“Ca… Cain,” breathed out the King of Hell.

That surprised Castiel enough to move his foot away.

“Cain?” he repeated. “Are you sure?”

“I wasn’t until recently,” Crowley confessed. “But with Abaddon challenging me, I needed a way to get rid of her. And the only thing that can kill a Knight of Hell dead…”

“It’s the First Blade, wielded by someone who bears the Mark. I know,” Castiel interrupted him. “So, you tracked him down?”

“He lives in Missouri. He has a bee farm.”

“Don’t lie to me, Crowley.”

“I’m not!” Crowley shouted out. “I swear I’m not! They have been around a lot longer than me. If there’s a place where demons go…”

Castiel kicked him on the jaw to shut him up. He’d already got what he needed from him.

Dean wasn’t happy with him when he opened the doors and they saw the state he’d left Crowley in.

“Dammit, Cas, we told you we needed him alive!”

“He’s alive.” Castiel shrugged. “Is that all?”

Sam leaned against the wall in front of the dungeon. He looked pale and disheveled, and like his legs couldn’t hold on the weight of his body. The Trials were taking a toll on him, slowly but surely burning him up from the inside out.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “That’s… thank you, Cas.”

His weakness was almost enough to get Cas to slow down in his single-minded pursuit.

Almost.

“I have to go.” He stopped to look over his shoulder as Dean roughly yanked Crowley’s chain in order to prop him back up in the iron chair in the middle of the Devil’s Trap. “Will you two be okay?”

“Yes, don’t worry about us,” Dean said. “Just trying to close the Gates of Hell, here, not like we need you or anything.”

Sam’s tired eyes said differently, but Castiel didn’t stay. There were mistakes he needed to correct and others he had to help.

Like Meg. Wherever she was.

* * *

Abaddon laughed maniacally, her face covered in soot and her teeth red with blood. Her body convulsed on the floor, almost burned from Castiel’s touch, but not quite. Not yet. Not enough to kill her, though he wasn’t sure there was enough power left in him to do such a thing.

Castiel knew he didn’t have much time. Just getting the demon to submit to that point had been hard enough.

The room was destroyed with the traces of their fight: broken furniture, shards of glass on the floor, holes on the wall where they had pushed each other. He had the upper hand, but it wouldn't be for long.

He didn't need long. Sam and Dean were on their way with the First Blade, and once they burst through the door, they wouldn't hesitate to sink it through her, to end her.

He had to be fast. He sank to the floor, straddling Abaddon under his weight. Her broken nose and the scorch marks on her skin gave her a grisly aspect. Castiel knew his aspects wasn't that much better: she had landed a few punches on him despite his best efforts. But for now, the advantage was his.

He rolled his ripped sleeves up and place his hands on Abaddon's throat.

"Where do demons go when they die?" he asked her.

Abaddon coughed, red saliva slipping down her chin.

"I have to thank you," she said, with a chuckle. "It's been a long time since someone could hold their ground against me. It was... invigorating..."

Castiel pressed her throat, letting his grace pulse through his fingers. Abaddon groaned in pain as new marks with the shape of the angel's hands appeared on her skin.

"I asked you a question," Castiel said. "Where do you go when you die?"

The amusement in Abaddon's eyes dissipated, replaced now by an unbridled fury.

"Really? Is that what you want to do right now?"

"Tell me."

This time the power he used was stronger, inflicting even more pain in her. Abaddon howled as the stench of burnt meat invaded the air.

"Why? I don't know!"

"That's not what I want to hear," Castiel said, shaking his head.

His punch would have broken the jaw of a human, but Abaddon just groaned under it.

"I don't know!" she repeated. "No one knows! We just... fade."

"Try again."

He made a mistake when he tried to punch her again. She stopped her fist and twsited his arm. Bones, tendons and muscle; it all got out of its proper place. Castiel let a scream escape from his lips as Abaddon bucked underneath him. The Knight of Hell had recovered her strength, and he was in trouble.

He rolled off of her, but he wasn't quick enough. The jab to his eye unbalanced him, sending him toppling down on the floor. Abaddon jumped to her feet, her power pushing against him. His body flew across the room before he could defend himself. The wall's plaster cracked against his spine. Castiel fell, sprawled on the floor as the Knight of Hell made her way towards him.

"We don't go anywhere," she said, laughing again. "We just vanish forever. Because, where can you send us that is worse than Hell?"

She grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him up, her nose so close to his that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin, the smell of smoke and sulfur that she oozed.

"She's gone, little angel," she told him. "You are never getting her back."

It hurt more than any punch, than any kick, than anything she could do to him.

"No."

"Even if you could somehow get her back, do you think I would just let her be?" Abaddon cackled. "Do you think I would just let Azazel's daughter defy my claim to the Throne? I'd just kill her again, before you could even get one good look at her."

Castiel realized too late, as it was often the case, the mistake he had made. Even if Abaddon was lying about not knowing where demons went, she would never tell him. She had too much riding on no one with a claim living.

Her grasp on him was looser now. She was standing closer to him know, her smile still sharp, but inviting.

"But you know, if you're just hot for any old demons, I'm sure you and I can reach an agreement," she told him. "We don't have to kill each other. I could use some power in my corner and you... well, you could still get a little taste of Hell."

The way she kissed him was insistent. Invading. Her tongue parted through his lips and filled him up with the taste of blood.

When Meg had kissed him, it had been sweet. Soft. An invitation that Castiel had been more than eager to respond to.

This... this revolted him.

His hand tightened around the hilt of his blade.

Abaddon yelled and stumbled backwards, the blood gushing now from the slash across her chest.

“You’re not like her,” Castiel spat at her. “There will never be anyone like her.”

Abaddon held a hand against the wound, as if she could stop the bleeding just by doing that. Her skin flashed golden, revealing the skeletal form underneath, but she didn’t fall.

“Well,” she said, gasping for air, but straightening her shoulders to continue the fight. “If that is what you really think, then maybe I’ll just send you to her!”

Castiel was tired. His body hurt from the fight, from the wounds the demon had inflicted on him, from trying to hold her off while he waited for the brothers.

But the moment she said that, a bolt of energy went down his spine.

“What did you say?”

Abaddon lunged towards him with a howl, her hands stretched out like claws. Castiel raised his blade, slashing at her forearm to keep her at bay.

“Why did you say that?” he shouted at her. “What do you know…?”

The doors burst open.

“Cas!” Sam’s voice shouted.

Abaddon took her eyes off Castiel, for a second. It was all that was needed.

Dean was on her, the First Blade in his hand.

“Wait!” Castiel screamed.

It was over faster than he could stop it. Dean sank the Blade straight into Abaddon’s gut. She shook and bellowed, her arms trying uselessly to reach Dean’s throat, but clearly it was too late.

Her skin glowed orange and golden, and then hot white. Her body shook and tossed, until they moved no longer.

That didn’t stop Dean, however. He lifted up the blade and stabbed her again. And again. And again, and again, long after Abaddon’s eyes glazed over. Blood and guts spread through Abaddon’s stomach, splattering over Dean’s hand and face, as his mouth contorted in a snarl, as his eyes glimmer with madness and fury.

Castiel stepped backwards, shocked by the violence of his friend’s reaction. Abaddon’s body barely looked human between his own attacks and Dean’s. Just a mess of meat and organs, nothing left to be recognized.

“Dean,” Sam called. “Dean?”

Dean lifted his eyes at him, breathing so heavily his shoulders rose and fell with every exhale. There was almost no trace of green in his eyes as he set them on Sam.

Sam was braver than Castiel. Or maybe he knew that, even in that state, Dean wouldn’t hurt him.

“It’s over now,” he told him, approaching his brother with caution, slumping his shoulder and speaking softly, as if that alone was enough to calm him down. “You can stop.”

Slowly, as if he was waking up from a dream, Dean’s features relaxed. His eyes returned to their normal color and the realization of what he had done started to hit him. His slacked open and his hands trembled as he struggled to let go of the Blade.

“I… I…” he mumbled.

“It’s okay.” Sam put a hand on his shoulder and slowly helped him up him to his feet. “It’s fine. Dean, it’s over. You killed her.”

Dean stared at the bloody mass that was left of Abaddon and cringed to himself. Castiel approached him, just as softly as Sam had done.

“Dean,” he said, stretching his hand towards him.

Dean looked at him with confusion. Then, slowly, he stretched his stained hand towards him.

It was almost like it pained him to let go of the blade, like he had to will each and every finger to let go.

But finally, the Blade was out of his hand and it no longer the deadliest weapon on the planet. Just an old bone that couldn’t hurt anyone.

Dean was still looking at it like he might snatch it away from Castiel, so the angel quickly hid it inside of his coat.

“You should go,” he told the brothers. “Get him out of here.”

“Yes,” Sam agreed. “Let’s go, Dean.”

Dean didn’t protest. He just let his brother walked him towards the door.

Castiel turned towards the stain on the floor. He would’ve loved to grab Abaddon’s skull, pull her closer, demand she expanded upon what she had said before Dean barged in. She knew more than she’d let on and if he had been given another moment…

But she was gone now, and he had issues to tend to.

He stretched his hand and with a pulse of his power, her body ignited. It would burn until there was nothing left.

He did the same for her lackeys, the demons Sam and Dean had killed on their way up to suite. Someone, perhaps a concerned neighbor that had heard the ruckus and the screaming, had called the authorities, but Castiel simply turned invisible as he passed them by the door.

He was back on the bunker even before the brothers were. He could’ve transported them there, but he figured they had things to talk about on the drive back.

Dean barely glanced at him as he made his way to the kitchen. He looked… dejected. Embarrassed, perhaps.

Sam hanged back to make his excuses.

“He’s, uh… he’s tired,” he explained.

Castiel nodded, even though they both knew that was a lie. Dean wasn’t just tired. Dean was struggling against a mystical force that threatened to consume his very humanity.

But none of them were going to say that out loud.

“The Blade?” Sam asked.

“It’s safe,” Castiel said. He didn’t want to say anything else. He knew that Sam wouldn’t put Dean at risk if he could help it… but he also knew that the brothers were, more often than not, each other’s biggest weakness.

“Right.” Sam rubbed at his eyes. He, too, seemed extremely exhausted. “Uh… did you… find out anything?”

Castiel was often in awe at Sam’s kindness. Even his worry for Dean must have been all-consuming, he still made a point to inquire about his business.

“Abaddon didn’t give me any clear answers.”

“But she gave you some answers?”

“Allusions. Taunts. Nothing I can use,” Castiel said.

He thought he was hiding his dejection well enough, but he must have been wrong. Sam put a hand on his shoulder and offered him a bitter smile.

“Well, don’t give up, Cas. I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

Castiel tilted his head at him.

“Did you know it’s been over a year now?” he pointed out.

“Yeah. I remember…”

“A year on Earth is just less than a day in Heaven,” Castiel continued. “Over a century in Hell.”

“I’m not sure…”

“It could’ve been just a few seconds for Meg. Or it could have been millennia,” Castiel explained. “I fear the latter might be the case. I fear she’s been suffering all of this time, thinking that I’ve forgotten her, that I’ve abandoned her.”

Sam nodded.

“I understand. When Dean was in Hell…” He stopped and shook his head. “I wasn’t able to even function, Cas, and you’ve been helping us all this time, despite what you might be suffering.”

His hand slid down and before Castiel realized it, he touched his elbow, ever so slightly. It was still enough to send a jolt of pain through him. Sam immediately pulled his hand away.

“I’m sorry. Did she hurt you?”

Castiel hadn’t even realized the wound was still there. He turned his attention towards himself. The ribs he’d cracked were almost completely healed and his grace was turning towards the internal bleeding he’d endured.

“It’ll heal,” he said, with a shrug.

“Okay.” Sam seemed slightly uncomfortable, though Castiel couldn’t tell why. Perhaps he was commiserating for him. He wanted to tell him there was no need, that the skin and bones he wore were still just a mask. He was, still, something he couldn’t touch or see or understand, a being greater than anything Sam could even imagine.

But he still felt the weariness in his muscles, the pain in his chest when he thought of Meg.

He didn’t think Sam needed to hear that sort of thing now.

“Goodnight,” Castiel said, turning around.

“Night,” Sam mumbled.

The brothers had been kind enough to give him a room, even though they knew he didn’t have the same need for rest and privacy as they did. He was thankful, though. As soon as his grace was done repairing his body, he turned his attention to the tears and stains in his clothes. They didn’t bother him, in particular, but he had notice people reacted with concern when his appearance was disheveled in any way.

Sam and Dean had enough on their plate to be worrying about him as well.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes for a moment. He figured he could go out, try to find other demons, see how the news of Abaddon’s death would spread around. Now that she was gone, he figured Crowley would become the King again.

He would’ve killed him. He should have killed him, when Sam fail the Tests and they decided to let him live. He didn’t deserve to, certainly, but Castiel had disgruntledly accepted the brothers call on the matter. There was really no point in arguing with them on the matter.

_Besides, I would like to take a stab at him when I’m back._

Castiel’s eyes shot wide open.

“Hello?”

His room was empty. But he could’ve sworn he hear the voice, clear as day.

He knew he hadn’t been drifting off to sleep. He didn’t need sleep at all, He was tired, yes, but his mind was sound.

She’d sounded like she had been whispering in his ear. He was almost shaking when he said her name:

“Meg?”

There was no answer, of course.

* * *

Cain seemed almost peaceful as Castiel approached him.

The Father of Murder stood next to the river, immobile. There was a fishing rod on a rock next to him, but he seemed to be ignoring it. As if he’d got bored waiting for something to take the bait and had decided to just stand and watch the waters running instead. The light breeze swayed his dark locks and greying beard.

If Castiel hadn’t know who he was, what he was, he would’ve taken him for just an old man, enjoying a moment out in the quiet nature.

The darkness he saw just underneath his skin, however, swirling in his veins, obscuring the features of the body he wore, told a different story. It was blacker than any of the corrupted souls he’d seen; darker even than Crowley’s or Abaddon’s or even Meg’s. They had looked like grey storm clouds to him, a gathering of emotions and impulses and half-forgotten memories.

Cain, though… it was like looking at an infinite nothingness, a void that just absorbed the light around him, that threatened to escape the confines of his body.

He was calm when he spoke:

“I thought this would be… relaxing,” he said. “It helped in the past, just… being out here, isolated. It reminds of when the world was young and still. Do you remember that, angel of the Lord? Do you remember Eden?”

“Yes,” Castiel replied. He had been but a young fledgling then, naïve and marveling at his Father’s creation. He remembered Paradise on Earth. “You were never there, though.”

“I remember my father telling us about it,” Cain said. “When we were young. Before Lucifer started whispering his lies on my brother’s ear and I killed him out of mercy. Before my mother went mad at the loss of us both and turned to dark magic so her womb became a mill of monsters. Before Seth, my brother, who drank blood instead of milk from her breasts, because she wanted a child that wouldn’t die. And before my father left to wonder the Earth, alone and always a stranger wherever he may have gone. How did you find me?”

The change of pace from his reminiscences to the question left Castiel… unsettled. Was Cain slipping? Would they need to stop him soon? The last time Dean had held the Blade…

He hadn’t come there for that.

“I have a question for you,” he told him. “You might be the only who can answer me.”

“And why would I do that?” Cain asked, finally turning to look at him. His eyes were bright and sharp on him. “I don’t owe you or your kind a single thing.”

“I am not like Lucifer.”

“Aren’t you?” Cain took a step towards him. “Since I’ve returned to the world, I’ve heard some things about you, Castiel. Leader of the rebellion in Heaven. Renegade.”

Castiel stayed silent for a moment. He didn’t know he would have to justify actions that he still deeply, sorely regretted, but he should’ve been used by then. He should’ve known that wherever he went, his past would always be called into question.

He missed Meg more than ever. She’d understood him, in a way no one else had to.

“Everything I did, I did out of love,” he said in the end. “I would hope you’d understand that.”

Cain’s lips curled up ever so slightly. It wasn’t quite a smile, but something similar.

“Yes, I guess I could,” he said, with a mild shrug. “What is this question, again?”

“Where do demons go when you die?”

Cain simply stared at him.

“Why do you think I would know this?”

“You’re one of the oldest demons who walks the Earth, if not more,” Castiel pointed out. “Lucifer made you.”

“Lucifer was a child playing with his father’s tools.” Cain scoffed. “He couldn’t create. He could only… twist and deform what was already there. Infect what was pure light and turn it into darkness.” He stopped for a second and stared at Castiel, pensive. “Maybe that’s how it happens. Maybe, when we die, we go back to the darkness where we came from.”

Castiel frowned. What Cain was saying made a certain amount of sense, but he still couldn’t… quite grasp what that meant for Meg.

“You mean Hell?”

“Hell. Maybe. But no. The darkness didn’t come from there; it was there, but Lucifer took it from somewhere else.”

The angel shivered. Despite the time that he had spent on earth, despite all the sacrileges he’d committed already —he was committing right now, trying to bring back a demon to life—, he still couldn’t help the reverence and fear at what Cain was telling him. His father’s secrets, the secrets of creation and life and where the universe and the atoms that made up his body and the light that made up his grace had come from, weren’t meant for him to learn. For any angel or human that had ever walked the Earth.

Lucifer had tried, but it was different. He’d done it to spread his hate and misery. Castiel was doing this for love.

“Where did he take it from?”

Instead of answering, Cain rolled up his sleeve. The Mark on his forearm looked bright red and angry, almost pulsating with the same darkness that surrounded the rest of the demon. He grazed with his fingertips, tracing its form, with an almost curious look in his face. Like it was the first time in hundreds, thousands of years, that he was really looking at it.

“I wouldn’t know,” Cain said, finally, after a long pause. “If I knew, perhaps, I could return it there. Perhaps I could go there myself. Vanish into nothingness. It sounds… peaceful, doesn’t it?”

Castiel almost pitied him. Not the demon he was, perhaps, not the being that had caused so much pain and destruction through the ages. But the man he had once been. Perhaps, the man he still was underneath all those layers and layers of darkness pressing down on his soul. But then again, it had been so long… was there even anything left of it at all?

“Would there be a way to take something that had gone into the darkness back again?”

Cain shook his head.

“It’s all-consuming,” he said. “It’s endless.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Lucifer said he had. That it was what his Father had used to make angels.” Cain’s smile was twisted as he said. “But then again, he was a liar, wasn’t he?”

Castiel left the field, feeling unsettled. Cain was definitely slipping and he feared the day that they would have to finally put him to the Blade. Dean was the only one who could use it and he might lose himself when he did, end up alone and half-mad just like Cain.

_You’ll deal with that when it happens._

Castiel stopped his steps. The voice… Meg’s voice had begun speaking to him more often and more often during the past year, encouraging him to keep looking for her, to keep trying to find her, to reach out to her.

But if he ever asked her a direct question about where she was or what he could do to bring her back, she would never answer. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe, just like him, she just didn’t know where she was.

However, if he could hear her, if she could still let him know she was there somehow, that meant she was somewhere. It meant she hadn’t fade to nothingness like Cain seemed all too eager to do.

“I would rather it didn’t happen at all,” he said out loud.

_Well, we don’t always have a choice in those matters, do we, Clarence?_

“I suppose not. If we had a choice, I would have stayed back with you that night. I would’ve protected you.”

 _No use crying over spilt blood_ , Meg ghostly voice replied him. _What matters now is that you’ll find me_.

Castiel closed his eyes. He really hoped she was right.


	2. Chapter 2

He was lying on his side on the bed. Naked and happy. His muscles were sore and there was an itching on his throat where she had left a hickie earlier.

Meg laid by his side, with her eyes closed. They didn’t need to sleep, not really, but they have managed to exhaust each other that night.

Was it night? Castiel wasn’t sure. It had been when they’d stumbled into the room, mouths clasped together and hands roaming to find all the buttons and zippers, when they’d fallen into bed and forgotten about the outside world for hours and hours. Meg had been like a flame in his arms, eager and unstoppable. Castiel was sure there were marks of her nails across his back.

He didn’t care.

He hadn’t felt this at peace in a very long, long time.

He stretched his hand and brushed aside a lock of golden hair that had fallen on her face. Meg opened her eyes and a lazy smile spread across her face.

“Hey, there, Clarence,” she mumbled.

“Hello.”

She snuggled closer to him, all the curves of her body pressing against his still hot skin.

“That was fun,” Castiel commented as he put a hand around her shoulders to pull her closer. “It was… it was fun for you as well, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, believe me, if I hadn’t had fun, you would know,” she told him, with a giggle.

“Good.” Castiel sighed and relaxed back against the pillow, sinking his fingers in her locks. “That’s very good.”

Meg’s fingers dragged across his chest, lazily.

“It was better than good,” she purred. “And I’m ready to go again when you are.”

That wouldn’t take long, he was sure, but for now, he was happy to just lay there with her, cuddling her against his body, solid and present and alive again.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she giggled.

Castiel didn’t think he was looking at her in any special way. He just couldn’t quite believe that she was there… that she was really there.

How was she there? He remembered her running towards him down the bunker’s halls, her arms on his neck and her lips on his and he hadn’t even questioned it. But now…

Meg left a soft kiss on his shoulder.

“What is it, angel? You’re scaring me.”

“Where were you?” he asked her, before he could stop himself, before he could even consider the fact that might kill the mood. “Before you… came back, before you found me. Where were you?”

Meg twisted her lips and her eyes darkened. Not in the way they did when her demonic essence came up to the surface, just… with an infinite sadness that didn’t suit her at all. He’d seen her enraged and he’d her static and scared. This was different from all of that.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said. She sat up, escaping his embrace, and looked up at him, her dark golden locks framing her face. “Can’t you just be happy that I’m back?”

“I am,” Castiel assured her, because that was the last thing, he wanted her to think. “Of course I am… so happy. Meg, you have no idea… I thought…”

She shushed him as she moved to straddle him. The sheet that covered her slid down her shoulders. She still bore the marks of his kisses on her neck, on the top of her breasts. Castiel felt arousal going through him once again.

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” she said, leaning down to kiss him.

“Gross. Is that what you really dream of?”

Castiel reacted instantly, sitting up and moving to put himself between Meg and the open door.

He hadn’t even heard Crowley come in, but now the Kind of Hell was standing on the doorway, with his hands in his pockets, looking at him with a judgmental eyebrow arched up.

“If I had known she meant so much to you, I would’ve given you an hour with her before I…”

“What is he doing here?” Meg asked from the bed, holding the sheet against her body to hide her nakedness.

“I don’t know.” Castiel stood up and, with a snapped of his fingers, got dressed again. “But I intend to find out.”

“Oh, come on, feathers, you know this isn’t real,” Crowley said.

“What do you mean?”

Crowley squinted his eyes at him, as if he thought Castiel was somehow joking with him.

“You really don’t know that you’re trapped in your head?” Crowley asked him. “None of this is real. She isn’t real.”

Meg stood by his side now, back in her jeans, blouse and leather jacket get up. She put a held unto his arm.

“Why is he still alive?”

Castiel let the angel blade slide into his hand from inside his sleeve.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t think the boys will care if I end him now. He’s lived past his usefulness.”

“Oh. Ouch. My feelings.” Crowley rolled his eyes. “Snap out of it, moron! We don’t have much time until Lucifer realizes I’m here.”

“Lucifer?” Meg repeated. “He’s in the Cage.”

“No. He’s here. In your boyfriend’s head— why am I talking to you? You’re still dead.”

Castiel held the blade up to Meg.

“Do you want to do the honors?”

She said nothing.

“Meg?” Castiel asked, turning towards her.

She was frozen in place. The expression that had been so lively just a moment before was blank now, her body fixed in place. No matter how many more times he called her name or how he grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to shake her, she wouldn’t react at all.

“Well, that’s just sad,” another voice intervened.

Crowley tensed up and Castiel turned around. Lucifer, in his old vessel, was standing on the other side of the room, leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

And suddenly, Castiel remembered. The Cage. Lucifer’s promise to help stop the Darkness. Castiel saying yes to him.

Crowley was right. This wasn’t real.

“You…”

Lucifer made a gesture with his hand. Meg dissolved in wisps of dark smoke, the place where she had been standing a second before now empty.

It was like a kick to Castiel’s stomach.

“No!” he screamed. He started looking for her around the room. No, she couldn’t have gone, she couldn’t… it wasn’t… “Meg? Meg!”

“It’s really pathetic if you think about it. After all these years, he’s still obsessed with her.” Lucifer laughed as he approached Crowley. “And if they wanted him to snap out of it? Well, they shouldn’t have sent you of all people. You were the one who killed her.”

“Oh, come on, it was nothing personal,” Crowley shrugged. “She was getting in the way of…”

Castiel spun on his heels and punched him. He didn’t mean to. He just couldn’t keep listening to him talking, so smug and unrepentant.

Crowley stumbled backwards, his eyes opening wide in surprise.

“Angel…” he started, but Castiel punched him again before he could continue.

And again. And again.

He remembered the beating he’d given him back when the boys had captured him and planned to cure him, when his grief for Meg was like a fresh wound still bleeding. He’d held back then, because Sam and Dean needed the Kind alive.

He had no reason to now.

Crowley yelled and the blood jumped out of his nose, and mouth, along with teeth he spat out on the floor. He gasped for air pathetically when Castiel put his foot on his rib and pressed down until they cracked. He coughed and tried to cover his head with his hands, but Castiel just grabbed him by the jacket and pushed him against the wall, almost crushing his skull against the plaster, over and over…

“Clarence, that’s enough.”

Meg was back there again, looking at him with her big brown eyes.

Castiel grabbed at Crowley’s skull, resisting the impulse to press until it broke, until his hands were stained with his blood and brains and he was no more.

“You’re not real,” he said, staring at her. “The real Meg would never tell me to stop.”

“Oh, good, glad you…” Crowley started saying, but Castiel simply shoved him back to the floor. He groaned and curled up as Lucifer approached them.

“She’s been living on your head for so long. How could you even tell?” he argued. He put a hand on Castiel’s shoulder. His smile was almost satisfied. “ _He_ wants you to go back to the world, a world where she doesn’t exist anymore. But you could also stay here. With her.”

“Clarence,” Meg called to him, extending her hands.

The sweet taste of her kisses. The aching emptiness on his chest that had stopped throbbing, at least for a moment, the second he’d seen her.

It was really no choice at all.

He let go off Crowley and embraced his demon. She shushed him again and ran a hand through his back, consoling. Soft. Like she would never be if she was real.

He paid almost no attention as Lucifer landed another punch on Crowley’s face.

“Go. Tell them I am not going anywhere.”

Crowley disappeared in a cloud of red smoke. Lucifer just disappeared.

Leaving him alone with his dream. Lucifer was right. If he didn’t really pay attention to the details, Castiel could ignore the lack of thorns in her words, the lack of bite in her laughter.

He could forget just how much he’d failed her all of these years.

* * *

“Give her back to me.”

The Darkness stared at him. To a human eye, she would seem like a woman, tall and beautiful, but Castiel knew. He felt the air around her buzz with power, he could see the shadows lurking around her, behind her mask, like a halo that absorb the light instead of radiating it. She was terrible and immense, and Castiel had no doubt she could smite him with the movement of one of her fingers.

He didn’t care. If she could help him, he was willing to risk it.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Her name was Meg,” Castiel told her. “I… I think it was Meg, in any case, that was the name she went by. She was my friend and… a demon.”

“And you think I can bring her back to you?” Amara asked. “That’s why you came all the way here?”

She was living what could be considered a life of luxury, lounging in a divan in front of a large glass window that overlooked the city. She had ditched the simple black dress she wore when she had just been returned to earth for more a luxurious, tailor-made outfit. She was, in all senses of the word, a goddess.

And Castiel didn’t want his hopes to dwindle, he really didn’t. But if she couldn’t help him, if she wouldn’t help him…

_Don’t give up on me, Clarence. We’re so close!_

Castiel clenched his jaw and squared his shoulders.

“You brought back Mary,” he pointed out.

Amara put down her glass of wine on the coffee table in front of her.

“That’s different,” she said. “First of all, Dean did something for me no one else in the world could’ve done. Second, I don’t have that power.”

_She’s lying._

“I don’t believe that,” Castiel said. “Demons were created with the power that bearing your Mark gave Lucifer. Your darkness is what corrupted the souls they used to be.”

Amara’s lip twitched ever so slightly and Castiel feared he had made a mistake. Yes, she was the Darkness to his Father’s light, but that didn’t mean she necessarily liked to be reminded of it.

_We gotta tread carefully here if we want to get anywhere._

“That might be the case,” Amara conceded. “But it doesn’t mean I have powers over them. Especially when they’re no longer part of this reality.”

That confused Castiel to no end.

“You have absorbed souls, including those of demons…”

“And they are now part of me, the same way my brother is part of this world and this world couldn’t survive without him,” Amara replied. “But angels are demons are here because my brother and Lucifer willed it so. When their will is interrupted, they just… leave. They cease existing.”

Castiel took a moment to absorb those words. It was more or less what Cain had said, what Abaddon had insinuated.

But it didn’t make any sense.

If Meg wasn’t anywhere anymore, why could he still hear her? Why was her voice in his head growing clearer and clearer every day?

“No,” he said. “She has to be… somewhere…”

“Not even you could perceive what it is like to be nothing,” Amara told him. “No mind can. Because you exist, because you’re a splinter of Light, you can’t conceive what it is like to go extinct. To return to the Primordial Emptiness.”

“You have to be able to bring her back.” Castiel realized he was begging at this point, but he didn’t care. “You have to…”

Amara stood up. Her body was shorter than his, but it was like the reality shifted around her as she moved, as if she wanted Castiel to see and be reminded of what she was.

“I don’t _have_ to do anything,” she told him. “Even if your arrogance wasn’t enough to convince me not to help you, I can’t. Your demon friend is gone. She’s beyond your or mine or even your Father’s reach.”

_No._

“No.” Castiel shook his head. “No, she can’t be…”

“I am bored with you now.” Amara lifted her chin. “Next time you come into my home announced, maybe I will send you into the Empty with her.”

And with a wave of her hand, she expelled him.

Castiel only realized it when he blinked and found himself standing in the middle of a busy street. A loud horn came from somewhere to his right, as the tires screeched over the pavement and the car came to an abrupt halt just inches away from his hip.

“What the big idea?!” the driver screamed at him through the open window. “Get out of the street, weirdo!”

Castiel obeyed. Not because the cars would damage him if they collapsed against him (they probably would hurt the drivers more than they would hurt him), but because his mind was suddenly in a daze. He’d heard cruel words lashed at him. Insults and recriminations, from his brethren, from his friends, from his enemies.

None had hurt more than Amara’s.

All this time, he had refused to believe Meg was really gone. Nothing ever ended, not really: human souls lived on in Heaven, monsters paid for their misdeeds in Purgatory. Death was but a way to move through the different planes of existence.

But what happened to something when it simple ceased to be?

He stumbled into an alleyway. The homeless man going through the garbage looked at him, startled.

“You okay there, man?”

Castiel didn’t answer to him. He didn’t know what he could have possibly say.

He leaned against the wall, letting himself slide down until he was sitting on the floor, not caring for the filth and the dust getting on his clothes.

Amara had been her last hope. His Father wouldn’t answer to his prayers; he never had. But even then, it was the Darkness that was supposed to have power over these things.

But she didn’t.

And Meg was gone.

It was over.

“Hey,” the homeless man insisted. “You okay?”

Castiel buried his face in his hands. His body shook as he did what he hadn’t allowed himself to do in three years: mourn. Cry. Say his goodbyes.

_No._

“Please, stop,” he mumbled.

_This isn’t goodbye, Cas. Don’t tell me you’re giving up._

“I can’t… I can’t help you. Meg, I’m sorry. I can’t bring you back.”

 _Sure you can!_ , she insisted. _You just have to keep trying. There’s gotta be a spell or a…_

“There isn’t! Please, please don’t… don’t torment me anymore. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Something clinked at his side.

He startled and almost jumped to his feet, but he realized by the smell of his clothes that it was just the homeless man. He was leaning next to him, leaving a brown paper bag on the floor within Castiel’s reach, but leaning away as if he didn’t want the angel to touch him.

“You need this more than I do,” he said.

And with that, he turned around, pushing away the shopping cart he held of his worldly possessions in.

Castiel felt his throat hoarse and his mouth dry, now alone in the dark alley. He leaned forwards to grab the bag the man had left him and he almost laughed when he say its contents.

It was a glass bottle of cheap whiskey, still half full.

_Clarence…_

Castiel struggled with the cap, but just for a moment. The smell of alcohol tingled in his nose.

_Clarence, please._

“You’re gone. I’m sorry.”

The alcohol was heavy on his tongue and hot as it made its way down his throat. He gulped it all down in one go and, of course, it wasn’t nearly enough for him to really feel any changes.

But it was a start.

* * *

“Are you sure?”

“That’s where all the signs point,” Mitch said, on the other side of the phone. “Of course, I could have a unit pick him up, but…”

“That wouldn’t end well for your guys,” Dean pointed out.

“I am aware,” Mitch replied. “Which is why, I’m calling you. He’s your pet angel. You have to pick him up and make him behave.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. There was no way to explain to Mitch that Cas had been out of control for months now.

“Okay, thanks, man,” Sam said. “We’ll just… we see what we can do.”

There wasn’t much they could do. The last time they have tried talking to Cas about the issue, the angel had flown away mid-conversation. This was the first time they had news of him in weeks.

“How the hell do you stage an intervention for someone who can be halfway across the word before we can even finish speaking?” Dean asked as he turned on the Impala’s engine.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “But we have to help him, somehow.”

“Do we do? I mean, I get that the guy is suffering, but…”

“What do you suggest we do then? Just let him drink entire liquor stores every other day?”

Dean grumbled as they sped down the road.

“I’m not saying that,” he clarified in the end. “It’s just he made it very clear that he didn’t want our help.”

“It’s been tough for him, Dean,” Sam argued. “First he wasn’t allowed to go back to Heaven… then he had to fight you…”

“Don’t remind me,” Dean said. He absentmindedly scratched at his forearm, where the Mark of Cain had once been.

“And then Lucifer. It’s been rough for him.”

“It’s been rough for all of us!” Dean countered. “We don’t let these things break us, Sam. We push through and we keep on keeping on.”

“Sometimes you can’t just push through, Dean…”

“Yes, but he isn’t _supposed_ to break,” Dean replied. “He’s Cas. He’s like… this old eldritch monstrosity with all the power in the world. He isn’t _supposed_ to go down like this.”

Sam stared at the moving countryside beyond the passenger’s window. He hated to admit that a part of him agreed with Dean. Cas had gone through so much, but so had them and now it was… it was as if he had lost whatever purpose made him keep going. He didn’t understand what had happened exactly in these few months that had led to Cas completely falling into a path of clear self-destruction, but…

“It doesn’t matter what he is or isn’t supposed to do or be,” Sam concluded. “He’s our friend and he needs our help.”

“If he even wants it,” Dean concluded.

That had to be the biggest hurdle. Both Sam and Dean had tried talking to him about it, together and separately, to no avail, especially after Claire had called them to let them know Cas had called her in the middle of the night to ask her forgiveness. Cas had stared at them both with absolutely no emotion in his blue eyes.

“I don’t recall,” he’d said, simply.

“Cas, have you… have you been drinking?”

“Can you even get drunk?” Dean had asked.

“If I pace myself correctly.”

He had refused to elaborate on the matter, particularly on why he had decided to drink so much lately, and he’d only got worse in the past weeks.

Sam had no idea how the hell they were supposed to get to the bottom of it, but they had to. They needed Cas on his A-game. With Lucifer roaming the earth again and causing so much chaos, they couldn’t afford to fall apart, no matter how much they might have been tempted to.

The bar was empty of human life when they walked in. No patrons, no waiter, no bartender behind the counter. The only occupied table was in the furthest corner. Castiel had collapsed against it, his face buried in his arms, his hand still faintly holding a bottle of vodka. There were others, rolling at his feet, and as they got close, Sam noticed his clothes stank of alcohol.

“Well, this is gonna be good,” Dean mumbled under his breath as he headed directly to Cas.

The angel lifted up his head with a jolt when Dean put a hand on his shoulder. He blinked and squinted his eyes at them.

“What are you… what are you doing here?” he slurred.

“Came looking for you,” Dean said, simply. He eyed the empty bottles and Castiel disheveled appearance and shook his head. “God, Cas, how much did you have?”

“Enough.”

“Yeah, I would say.”

Dean grabbed him by the arm. Usually, he wouldn’t have managed to move Castiel an inch, but that particular day Cas was either too drunk or too depressed to put up any resistance. He got up to his feet and swayed slightly as Sam hurried to grab his other arm.

“Alright, Cas, we’re taking you home.”

“I don’t… I don’t want to go,” Cas grumbled.

“You don’t have much of an option, buddy,” Dean added. “You’ve been drinking every bar in the state dry. That has to stop.”

Cas suddenly turned very rigid. He planted his feet on the ground and seemed to remember the brothers couldn’t really manhandle him if he didn’t want them to.

“No.”

“Cas, don’t be stubborn…”

“I’m not going.”

Sam found himself grasping at the air where Cas had been standing a second before.

“Dammit, Cas…” Dean started to protest… only to be interrupted by the din and clatter on the other side of the bar.

Cas had crashed against a table, knocking it and several chairs down along with him. He laid sprawled on the floor, blinking and looking very confused about what had just happened.

“Well, it seems his flying radar isn’t so sharp when he’s wasted,” Dean commented.

There was a twitch on the edge of his lips, so Sam shot him a warning glare. The last thing Cas needed right now was for them to laugh at him. He strolled towards him and crouched down to be on his level.

“Cas, we’re just trying to help you,” he told him as Cas attempted to focus his gaze on him. “You disappeared on us. While Lucifer is still out there, and just… we didn’t know if he’d got to you or…”

Castiel closed his eyes for a second.

“I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Well, you did a piss poor job of it,” Dean pointed out. Sam glared at him again, but his brother just shrugged. Of course, they could always count on him to bring the tough love to the table.

But Sam couldn’t say he didn’t agree.

“This needs to stop,” he told Cas. “I get it. You’ve been through a lot. But Cas, we need you. You have to…”

“No!”

The entire bar shook with the sudden surge of power, but it was gone in barely a moment. Castiel crawled backwards away from Sam, and for a moment, he didn’t look like the mighty warrior he was. He looked… small. Like a terrified child.

“Cas…”

“If I stop… if I…” Castiel shook his head. “This is the only way I don’t hear her.”

Sam startled and looked at Dean, but his brother merely shrugged. This was as much news to him as it was to Sam.

“Hear who?” Sam asked Castiel. “Angel radio?”

“No. _Her_.” Castiel was breathing heavily now. His eyes were wet with tears that he tried to blink away to no avail. “Meg.”

“Meg?” Dean repeated, as startled as Sam. “Demon bitch supreme, has been dead for four years Meg? That Meg?”

“Dean…” Sam started.

“She keeps saying I gave up on her,” Castiel explained. His gruff voice broke a little more with every word. “That I… but Amara said there was no way, that she was… beyond everyone’s reach. Wherever she is… I can’t… break her out of there. But she won’t stop…”

He drew his knees to his chest and hid his face against them, as he grabbed at his own hair so tightly Sam feared that he would start ripping it out. But he stayed very still instead.

Sam stood up and turned towards Dean. He saw his own disconcert in his brother’s face. They stepped away ever so slightly. Sam didn’t think Cas would eavesdrop in their conversation, not with how… desperate he seemed.

“Did you know he was looking for Meg?” Dean asked.

“He… he used to talk about it, but then with the mess of the Mark and Cain and Amara, he just… he stopped,” Sam explained. “I thought he had… you know, let go of the idea.”

“Yeah, because it’s a stupid idea,” Dean said. Again, not mincing words that day. “Is it even _possible_ to bring a demon back after it’s killed?”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s not.”

Cas hadn’t lifted up his head, but it was obvious he was paying attention to them.

“Amara said it wasn’t,” he explained. “She would know, wouldn’t she? Every demon is… touched by her Darkness. She would know if they never…”

It was heartbreaking. Sam understood. If he had the power to bring back the people they have lost… Jessica…

“She doesn’t know everything,” he heard himself say, even before he could stop himself.

“I mean, she is literally God’s sister…” Dean started protesting, but Sam put a hand up to make him go quiet.

“She’s been locked away for eons,” Sam said. “She wasn’t the one who created demons. Lucifer was.”

“So what are you saying, that we could just capture Lucifer and kindly ask him to tell us where demons go when you gank them?” Dean asked. His tone indicated skepticism, but it did manage to make Castiel look up at them.

“I mean, he’s not going to just tell us,” Sam conceded. “But if we can find him, maybe…”

“What’s gonna stop him from outright lying to us?” Dean pointed out.

And that was a very good question but Castiel was grabbing unto the all, stumbling up to his feet. For the first time since his downward spiral had begun, he looked… determined. A little bit more like himself.

“Do you really think we could?”

The hope in his voice was the most heartbreaking thing. Even Dean, with his tunnel vision, had to realize that this was maybe the only thing that could snap Castiel out of this behavior.

“Cas, it sounds like a really long shot…”

“But we would be killing to birds with one stone,” Sam interrupted him. “If we can capture Lucifer and get him back in the Cage, we can also ask him about Meg. About demons.”

Castiel stared at them for a second… and then did the last thing Sam was expecting: he laughed. An actual, full-on laugh, that shook his shoulders as he held unto the table for dear life.

“He was in my head,” he said, between chuckles. “He was in my head and it’d never occurred to me to…”

He shook his head, and though he was far from being sober, when he straightened his shoulders and looked at the brothers again, he seemed almost like his old self: determined. Unstoppable.

Sam didn’t hold back his sight of the relief.

“Let’s capture him,” Castiel said.

He took a step… and stumbled upon another chair. Dean had to catch his arm before he ended on the floor again.

“Alright, fine,” he said. “But we’re gonna need you sober for this, Cas. Do you think you can do that?”

Cas looked at him and clenched his jaw.

“Yes. I will. For Meg.”

* * *

“This is a terrible idea.”

Doctor Hess stared at them with a mixture of exasperation and disgust.

“I don’t remember asking your opinion about it, Mr. Winchester.”

“Well, you’re going to have it anyway,” Sam replied, stubbornly. “This is a terrible idea. People are going to die.”

Cas put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed slightly. It was as much a consolation as it was a warning, but Sam didn’t really care. He knew Lucifer. He knew how dangerous he was.

“How long are you planning on keeping him?” Cas asked.

“As long as we need to, to study him and…”

“You’re going to die,” Dean said. He sounded like he was simply stating a fact. “Your people are going to die. Do you realize who this is? This isn’t just another one of your study subjects. This is the Devil himself.”

Doctor Hess made a dismissive gesture with her hand, clearly unbothered by the Winchesters protests.

“We are aware of the legends that surround this… personage,” she said. “But they are nothing but that. This is just another monster. A powerful one, no doubt, but still, something we can retain, study, and destroy.”

Sam scoffed and exchanged a look with Dean. They both knew that they were thinking the same thing. Doctor Hess and the British Men of Letter, for all their studies and all their knowledge and all the cool gadgets they developed… there were just things they couldn’t understand. The supernatural didn’t bow to science and human knowledge as easily as they thought it did. They only thing they’d accomplish by demystifying it would be to ignore just how out of their control it could get.

But they couldn’t oppose them, not without risking Mary.

The doors of the cabin opened and no less than eight of their agents escorted Lucifer outside, immobilized by heavy chains, marked with Enochian symbols. His face was covered by a hood, also heavily warded. He moved with dignity: his head up, his shoulders straightened. There was no way at all to tell what he felt about the fact he had been captured, if he felt anything at all. As they loaded him up in the van, closing the doors behind him, Sam felt a strange itch on his skin. He knew, even though it didn’t seem possible through the hood and the polarized windows, that Lucifer was staring right at him.

He suppressed a shuddered and tried to pay attention to what Doctor Hess was saying.

“… we will honor our part of the deal. No harm will come to your mother. Your… pet will remain free, and he will be able to interview the archangel.”

“Good,” Castiel said.

“As for the Nephilim…”

“We don’t know where he is,” Dean said. “Nor the mother, nothing. Maybe the demons caught them again.”

Doctor Hess squinted her eyes at him, but Dean held her gaze with unshakeable confidence.

He had always been an excellent liar, after all.

“Very well,” Doctor Hess said, through gritted teeth. She was obviously not convinced, but she couldn’t really accuse them of anything. Not without turning them and the hunters that had come with them against her organization. “We will keep searching for them. Meet us at the compound later today.”

And with that, she turned her back on them and stalked towards the other van waiting for her.

Sam waited until they were back in the Impala to explode.

“She is completely delusional.”

“I know,” Dean agreed.

“They’re not going to hold him for long.”

“I know,” Dean repeated. “But they still have mom.”

Sam bit the inside of his cheek. That was the only reason they had agreed to collaborate with them: they were holding Mary captive, and for all they knew, she might have been in a really bad state. They had tried to get them to give up Castiel and a part of him was certain they would try to capture him either way when they went to pick Mary up.

That was, if they were “done with her”, whatever that meant. He would rather not find out.

“What do you suggest we do?” Castiel asked.

There was a pause as Sam and Dean looked at each other, pondering the question.

“We need Crowley and Rowena,” Sam determined.

“Yeah, if they managed to find that… Grimoire of Mystical stuff that they were looking for and unchain the rest of her magic,” Dean pointed out. “We might have a chance then.”

“They’re not going to let either of them go that easily,” Castiel warned them.

“Well, good,” Dean said, as he turned on the engine. “Because I am not asking for permission _or_ forgiveness.”


	3. Chapter 3

Lucifer was perfectly still, sitting on his bench on the cell the British Men of Letters had built for him. If Castiel didn’t know any better, he might have thought he was… comfortable. Happy.

His smile even grew wider when Castiel approached the glass that stopped him from running away. He could feel the magic buzzing in the air, see the Enochian symbols of protection that had been ebbed into the sides and also on the chains around Lucifer’s hands. They weakened him, yes, but they also weakened Castiel.

He would have to tread very, very carefully.

The two angels stared at each other from beyond the glass separating them. Lucifer smiled wide.

“Well, hello, Castiel,” he said, as if they were just old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while. “How you’ve been?”

Castiel didn’t answer the question. He hadn’t come here to make small talk.

“I’m doing fine, thanks,” Lucifer continued, as if Castiel had cared to ask. “Bidding my time after the trap you set up for me with your new best friends. They are all a little stuck-up, aren’t they?” Lucifer imitated a posh accent and laughed.

But Castiel could feel the bitterness radiating from him, the anger.

“I have a question to ask you,” he said, flatly.

“Oh, you’re just like them.” Lucifer rolled his eyes. “That doctor woman kept coming here, trying to make small talk with me, trying to determine if I am, quote, ‘really the Devil’. They have no idea, do they?”

It was true. The British Men of Letters had its purpose in this plan and they had fulfilled it, but Castiel feared for their safety. Especially for what he was about to do.

 _There are cameras and microphones here_ , he thought, opening up his mind just enough so that Lucifer could hear his thoughts. _I cannot tell you where your son is out loud, for they would go and try to capture him immediately_.

Lucifer’s eyebrows shot up slightly. For the first time, Castiel had managed to catch him by surprise.

_And why would you tell me that?_

“I need an answer to my question,” Castiel said out loud. _And then I will take you to him_.

“I see,” Lucifer replied, tilting his head. “What is this question that is so important to you that you would betray your own kin?”

Castiel approached the glass.

“Where do demons go when they die?”

Lucifer lifted up his chin at him.

“Ah, I get it. This is about Meg.” He chuckled. “She was living in your head rent free long before I came along, wasn’t she?”

“Answer me,” Castiel insisted. “Where do demons go when they die?”

“And is there any way to bring them back, is what you mean,” Lucifer replied. He stood up. The chains clinked and clanked as he got closer to the glass. “What did she mean to you? Why are you willing to go through these lengths to get her back?”

Castiel swallowed. He hated it. He hated that Lucifer had been on his head and he knew, he knew exactly how much he’d missed Meg, how much he’d grieved her. But he was still going to make him say it, just to humiliate him, to make a mockery of his feelings.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what sort of humiliations he had to go through, or who he had to betray. What mattered was that he was so close, to listen to her voice again, to hold her again in his arms.

“I love her.”

Lucifer threw his head back and laughed.

“An angel in love with a demon! Oh, that is rich!” He shook his head. “Sadly, though, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

_There’s a spell. I can give it to you. I’ll even help you find the ingredients._

Castiel held Lucifer’s grey gaze, silently.

_Then I will break you out of here and take you to your son._

Lucifer tilted his head.

_Deal._

Castiel took the gun that had been hiding inside of his trench coat.

The Men of Letters had safeguarded the cell against everything, except for their own human inventions.

The sound of the glass shattering was deafening, followed by the alarms that started blaring the moment Lucifer stepped over it.

“Well, what now?” he said, laughing above the din.

Castiel grabbed him by the arm and pulled from him towards the door.

“Freeze!” several agents shouted. Castiel simply moved his hands, pushing them aside with as little force as he could. He didn’t want to necessarily kill or maim anyone, that was for sure.

The agents kept screaming at them, and of them even fired their weapon. Castiel caught the bullet in his hand, crushing it in his fist before letting it drop to the floor.

“Stay out of this,” he warned the men.

They fell like pine cones, one after the other. Castiel walked past them with Lucifer in tow, not even bothering to look at them. He heard the statics and calls on their radio.

“We have a situation on the entrance of the compound. I repeat, we are under…”

The radio went silence all at once when Castiel sent a simple wave of electricity crackling through the air. It seemed, that for all their sophistication, the British Men of Letter had really not counted on the simple, easy tactics of the American hunters.

He found a panel and placed his hand on it without much thought. He sent a wave of electricity, frying as many systems as he could, punching a guard running towards him hard enough to knock him out. Faintly, he wondered if Sam, Dean and the others had managed to find Mary and retrieve her to safety. But he had his own issue to deal with.

“Now, this is what I call a party!” Lucifer laughed, almost manically, as Castiel lead him down the hallways of the compound and the sounds of the fight reached their ears. “Oh, take this off me! I want to give some of them what they have coming!”

Castiel paid no attention to him. He simply kept walking, easily disposing off the agents that would try to oppose them, just by knocking them or placing a hand on their foreheads to put them to sleep. Sam and Dean had told him they wanted as little casualties as it was possible, but if he were to run into Lady Bevell or Arthur Ketch… well, then, all bets were off.

Still. They wanted some to survive to go back to England with their tails between their legs and let their bosses know their presence would not be tolerated there again.

It was really the Men of Letters who had brought this assault on themselves. If they hadn’t put Mary at risk, if they hadn’t captured her and locked her away in their compound, maybe Sam and Dean would’ve been willing to work with them. They really didn’t understand how much family meant to the Winchesters.

They stepped over the corpse of an agent that had fallen next to the wide-open door and finally reached outside. Away from all the Enochian magical wards that prevented Castiel from teleporting.

In a matter of seconds, they were in the middle of a forest in Kansas, not far away from Sam and Dean’s bunker.

“Finally,” Lucifer said, breathing in the clear air. “Are you going to take this off me…?”

“The spell first,” Castiel demanded.

“Oh, come on, you really have that little trust on me?” Lucifer asked.

Castiel simply stared at him in silence. Lucifer rolled his eyes.

“Fine. Come closer.”

Castiel did, his body tense and ready to attack if it turned out to all just be a trap. But Lucifer murmured some Enochian words in his ear, words that… made sense.

“Is that all?” Castiel asked.

“Simple, but effective,” Lucifer assured him. “Now, take these chains off me and take me to my son…”

Castiel stepped backwards, away from him as Rowena and Crowley emerged from the trees.

Lucifer looked at them for a second, before his attention turned back to the runes engraved on the trees’ bark, on the stones around him. Before he realized Castiel was stepping out, away from the perfect circular clearing they had prepared.

“Oh, that’s not fair,” he complained. “You lied to me.”

“Did you expect any different?” Castiel asked him.

Lucifer’s eyes glimmered with anger, but before he could say anything else, Rowena opened the Book of the Damned and started a slow, guttural chant. It was an old language, older than any human tongue, almost as ancient as Enochian itself. A language that had been used once, millions of years before, after the Rebellion, after the Fall and the Betrayal.

The earth under their feet grumbled, cracks forming on it, in a slow, small spiral. Lucifer threw his head back and laughed.

“You’re sending me back into the Cage,” he guessed.

“And this time, there’ll be no seals,” Crowley added. “You’re just going to stay down there forever.”

“Forever is a long, long time, Fergus,” Lucifer replied while Rowena’s chanting became faster and faster. “I was patient then. I can be patient again.”

The cadence of Rowena’s voice accelerated. The purple glow in her eyes intensified, as the cracks on the ground widened. The glimmer of the flames of Hell came up, hot red and orange, as the bars of the Cage grew around Lucifer, isolating him, separating him from them. From the world, where he could damage the world again.

But despite losing, he didn’t seem too concerned. He kept laughing, even as the black, thick bars closed around him, trapping him, even as he began sinking down on the earth.

Back to Hell where he had always belonged.

“Enjoy the rest of your time with your demon, little brother,” the Devil said, between cackles. “However long that might be.”

Rowena’s voice reached a crescendo, the spell making the air smell of sulfur and smoke. The Cage encased him, dragging him, drowning out his laughter almost maniacal now. Castiel, who had been trying to keep his face straight through it all, to not show how he was waiting and fearing that the spell would fail and the Devil would escape again, let a shudder go through his full body.

The crack on the earth shut. The light disappeared. Rowena recited the last syllables of the chant… and immediately dropped to the ground, all her strength drained by the effort. Crowley walked to her and grabbed her by the arm, holding her up and letting her lean against him.

“You did it, Mother,” he said.

And if he knew him a little better, Castiel would have said there was almost a note of admiration and pride in his voice.

“Well… of course I did,” Rowena mumbled, breathing heavily.

Castiel walked on the edge of the darkened circle left on the ground. He leaned down and placed his open hand on it. He could feel the power pulsing, even through the layers of the earth, even through the planes of existence between the Earth and Hell. Faint, yes, clearer to him because he was looking for it, and because of his connection to Heaven. Humans would be able to feel it too, he was certain. The last time, a priest had thought the place had been blessed and built a monastery on top of the place where the Cage had sunk.

This time, Sam, Dean and himself would make sure nothing like that happened again, that nothing would be able to hide him. And even Lucifer’s own son, when he was born, he would know just how dangerous this place could be.

“Angel, would you mind giving us a little help here?”

Castiel turned to them. Rowena was leaning all of her weight against her son, pale and shaking. Her red locks were wet with sweat and disheveled, and she seemed like she could barely keep her eyes open.

He felt her exhaustion ever before he put a hand on her forehead. It radiated off of her, like magic had before. Her strength, her energy; she had given it all to the spell.

And as much mistrust as there is still was between himself and Crowley, Castiel didn’t have any particular animosity towards the witch.

“Hang on,” he said, putting his hands on the both of them.

He teleported them straight to the Bunker’s door. He used the copy of the key Dean had given him and carried Rowena in his own arms.

“What is wrong with her?” Crowley asked as he followed him down the stairs and to the bunker’s infirmary. “What happened?”

Castiel laid her down on the bed, and placed a hand on her forehead to get her to sleep and stop shaking. When he looked for the pulse on her wrist, he found it, faint but firm and regular.

“I think she just overexerted herself,” Castiel explained. “The powers she had to touch on to do what she did… even at her full power, it might have overwhelmed her.”

“Oh.” Crowley sank his hands in his pockets. “Is she going to be alright?”

“With time,” Castiel assured him. At least he hoped he was right.

The King of Hell said nothing. He just kept looking at his mother’s sleeping body on the bed as Castiel covered her with blankets, making sure she wouldn’t feel any cold.

After that, there was nothing left for him to do there.

And he didn’t want to spend time alone with Crowley, unless it was absolutely necessary.

“I will go check on the boys,” he decided.

“Castiel. Wait.”

Castiel stopped but didn’t turn to look at Crowley. Perhaps he wanted to show him that whatever he had to say to him, it wasn’t as important as his friends’ safety.

“Did he tell you?” Crowley asked.

“Tell me what?”

“You know,” Crowley said. “About how to get back dear old Meg.”

Castiel slowly looked over his shoulder. The King’s face expressed nothing by a polite curiosity, but Castiel knew him better than that.

“What is it to you?”

“If he did, I was just thinking… perhaps you would need help acquiring the ingredients and performing the spell. And, maybe, I could offer you said help. I wouldn’t volunteer my mother until she is conscious and capable of speaking for herself, but I’m sure she wouldn’t protest to the idea.”

“You want to help me?” Castiel asked, squinting his eyes. “Why?”

Crowley stayed quiet for a moment before turning towards Rowena’s sleeping form.

“When I killed Meg, she was nothing to me,” he explained. “An annoying pretender that kept causing trouble in my kingdom. I didn’t know you actually cared for her. I thought that had gone away the moment you recovered your sanity.”

“Get to your point,” Castiel grumbled. He didn’t like Crowley speaking about Meg. He had some nerve even saying her name to begin with.

“My point is, I have gone through some… character development ever since. And you and I have become… friends.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“Allies.”

“Not that either.”

“Cordial acquaintances.”

“I hate your guts.”

“Fair enough.” Crowley shrugged. “Either way, I owe you.”

“Crowley, don’t insult my intelligence by trying to make me believe you feel bad for me.”

Crowley clicked his tongue.

“Fine,” he conceded. “I have a vested interest in staying alive. We have helped the boys defeat many a threat together, but they still wouldn’t defend me if your resurrected girlfriend came at me with an angel blade. You, on the other hand, she might listen to.”

Castiel stayed quiet, because he was sure the King wasn’t finished.

“And if I were to fail at the task of staying alive,” Crowley continued after a few seconds, “I wouldn’t mind to keep that little spell Lucifer gave you in my back pocket.”

There it was. Crowley was finally being honest or, at least, as honest as vermin like him could be.

Castiel reflected on the proposal. On one hand, he was averse to doing anything that could potentially benefit Crowley in any way. On the other, despite the spell seeming so simple, it could require a lot of power, and he wasn’t in a position to turn down any help. Not when he was finally so close.

“I believe we can work something out.” Castiel took a step towards him. “When Meg is back, I will convince her into giving you… a head start.”

“That’s good enough,” Crowley accepted. “And the spell?”

“You’ll learn it when we perform it, so you better be paying close attention.”

Crowley didn’t seem happy, but he seemed to realize it was the best he was going to obtain from him. He smiled and offered his hand, but Castiel didn’t shake it. He simply headed for the stairs once again, even though every instinct on his body was telling him to start the spell now, right now.

Meg would have to wait a little longer.

But after he made sure things at the compound were fine, he was finally coming to find her.

* * *

Sam and Dean looked exhausted as they sat on the kitchen table, each with a glass of whiskey in their hand. There was a heaviness on their shoulders and a sadness in their eyes Castiel had only seen following some heavy losses.

From the way the told it, the assault on the compound had been a success. The British Men of Letters had been driven off and warned to stay away forever, and there had only been one casualty on the American hunters’ side.

However, for the boys, it might as well have been a lost battle.

“We’re not sure what they did to her,” Dean told him when Castiel asked him why Mary had been escorted into the bunker handcuffed, and why she’d glared at him with such hostility as they lead her into the dungeon. “She doesn’t know who we are. She keeps saying her sons are children and she needs to go back to them. We…”

He stopped and took a deep, shaky breath. He seemed like he was about to break after all.

“We took some of the… devices they had in the compound,” Sam kept explaining. “We’re going to try to reverse engineer whatever it was they did to her, but… it could take time.”

Castiel look up at Jody, as she emerged from the kitchen with plates in her hand. She placed them in front of them.

“You need to eat, guys. We had a long day and you’re not going to get anywhere if you pass out.”

Sam and Dean didn’t seem like they wanted to eat or even exist at that moment. They would bounce back, Castiel was sure. He had seen them recover from many awful things. This was their mother, however, so he understood why they would be so concerned.

“Thank you,” Sam said, pulling the plate closer, even though he didn’t even try to pick up the sandwich. “Did mom…?”

“I took some to her earlier,” Jody said. “Donna said she ate. I think she’s calming down.”

“Okay.” Dean rubbed at his eyes. “Okay, so maybe she will cooperate when we try to cure her.”

Castiel stared them both with clear pity on his eyes.

“Do you want me to…?” he started asking.

“No, Cas.” Sam shook his head. “You did more than enough already.”

“Taking care of Lucifer, getting Kelly to safety… you’ve earned a rest,” Dean said.

They had to, but Castiel knew they wouldn’t take it until Mary was back to being herself.

“Did you… find it?” Sam asked him. “A way to…”

“If Lucifer is to be believed,” Castiel replied. He shifted on his seat. “I’m sure Meg would understand…”

“Cas, at least one of us deserves a happy ending,” Dean told him. “Go. Find her. Take her somewhere nice and stay there for a week. We’ll call if there’s an emergency.”

Castiel couldn’t express how thankful he was. Because he had been so impatient, since the moment he knew the possibility was so close, since he started believing…

It didn’t seem fair that he could be happy while Sam and Dean were still suffering over what had happened to Mary. But Meg might have been suffering too, in this Primordial Empty place that Amara had talked about, so he wasted no time.

“It was around here, if memory serves me right,” Crowley said, pointing at a spot on the cement outside the long-abandoned warehouse that had once held one of Lucifer’s crypt. “Did he say that it was necessary for us to be in the place where she was killed?”

“He didn’t say much, other than the words of the spell,” Castiel replied. He put the backpack down and took out the spray cans he’d brought along. “But I know some runes and sigils that should potentiate it, just in case.”

“Lovely,” Crowley replied. He didn’t move an inch to try to help as Castiel started drawing them on the pavement. He simply stood where he was, watching him in silence.

Which was good. Castiel didn’t need him to help and the less he spoke, the better. He took out the candles and started setting them up in the four directions: North, South, East and West.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to wait for my mother?” Crowley asked.

“She’s still recovering.”

“I’m sure she will be fine soon enough…”

“Crowley, either get in the circle or get out,” Castiel cut him off, impatiently.

Crowley did the second. Of course. He was too selfish and interested on the intricacies of the spell not to do as he was told.

“So, what do we do now?” Crowley asked. “Do we hold hands or…?”

Castiel snapped his fingers. The candles lit up immediately, their flames glowing faint under the streetlight that oversaw them. But it was good enough, Castiel thought.

It had to be.

He opened his hands up to the sky, like a supplicant begging to whatever power it was the was holding her, to return her to him. To give her back. To feel his pain and release her.

He put all his grief, all his sorrow, into the words as he began reciting them. He put the long conversations with the demons, the images that Lucifer had put in his mind while he was possessing, his anger towards Crowley, his despair when Amara had refused to help him. The long weeks of binge-drinking and lost hope, the loneliness even when he was in a room full of friends, the fear that this might not work. Her voice in his head, sometimes mocking, sometimes recriminating, sometimes encouraging. His absolute certainty that meant she couldn’t be gone; not really.

All of that came pouring out of him, as he repeated Lucifer’s spell over and over, as he kept looking for the fabric of the universe to be torn and for him to see, to feel this Empty place, to reach for Meg once and for all.

It had to work.

_Please, let it work._

He didn’t even notice the wind that was blowing until he felt his trench coat flapping against his legs, until Crowley pulled his own coat closer to him as if he needed protection from the cold. The fire in the candles danced in the wind, sparkled high for a few seconds and then when extinct. The streetlight blinked, threatening to explode.

“Castiel…” Crowley mumbled, fearful.

Castiel paid no attention to him. He could feel it: the power of the words, his grace responding to it, his will modeling the reality around him. He didn’t feel Meg, not yet, but she had to be coming. He was calling for her. Her spirit, her body, it had to return to him.

_Let her come back to me._

_Let me see her again._

His skin was burning and the power of his grace tingled on his body at first and then burnt. The light from his halo dispersed the dark, growing as his wings extended behind his back. He could feel his true form banging against the confines of his bones, of his skin, a reminder of what he was underneath and what he had once been.

He was pure will, pure intent. And his will would bring her back.

He was an angel and he was claiming for his demon.

And she would come back. He knew it now.

He _felt_ it.

The power surged from him all at once. The streetlight above their heads exploded; the broken glass rained down on them with a din. Crowley had gone down to his knees and was covering his head, cowering on the other side of the circle.

Castiel paid no attention to him. He was exultant, like he hadn’t been in years.

He looked around, but didn’t see anything in the dark.

“Meg?” he called out.

There didn’t seem to be anyone or anything in the shadows that surrounded them.

“Meg?”

For a fraction of a second, Castiel feared that it hadn’t worked out. That he’d said or done something wrong and he’d lost her, forever this time.

“Meg?”

And then, clear as day, it came:

“Clarence?”

Castiel didn’t wait to see what Crowley would do. He turned his back on him and ran towards the voice. He ran towards her.

She stood outside of the crypt’s entrance. She was staring at her own hands, at her body, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She looked much the same as Castiel had last seen her, wearing the round face of the girl from Cheboygan, her torn jeans and the leather jacket around her shoulders. Her hair was honey-blonde instead of black, but it fell on her shoulders in loose waves, without any bloodstains on it.

“Meg,” he called, and her name was a breath of relief in his lips.

She slowly looked up at him. A smile appeared on her face.

“You did it,” she said. “I knew you would.”

Castiel lifted a hand up to try and touch her, but Meg stepped back.

“No, don’t. It could be… we don’t know what kind of side effects…”

“Yes.” Castiel stepped back away from her. He wanted to hold her and kiss her and take her somewhere private, just as Dean had suggested, but he had to be patient. He had waited years for this. He could wait a little longer. “I… I can’t believe you’re here.”

Meg’s smile grew wider and then, suddenly, she burst into laughter.

“I can’t believe it either!”

Castiel felt his own laughter climbing up from his stomach to his throat. It was almost painful to let it out, to let it grow until he couldn’t anymore. He leaned against the wall and watched as Meg wiped the tears from her eyes, a mixture of pure joy and relief that was a mirror to his own.

“I’ve missed you,” Castiel told her, softly.

Meg’s eyes couldn’t have been sweeter.

“I’ve missed you, too.”

He caught something moving out of the corner of his eye.

Crowley stood several steps away from them, looking at them with an eyebrow crooked.

“Well…” he said. “I think… I will take that head start now.”

And with that, he was gone. Meg’s happiness soured.

“What was he doing here?”

“Ignore him. We can deal with him later,” Castiel promised her. “Where do you want to go?”

Meg sighed and her smile returned, just as easily.

“Anywhere you want, angel.”

* * *

“Crowley, for fuck’s sake, don’t you think we have enough on our plate?”

They certainly seemed very busy, with what appeared to be every single book there was on the bunker about mind control and the trinkets and parts of one of the Men of Letters’ machines spread all over the table. Their angered expressions obviously didn’t signal anything good for Crowley, but he had to tell them anyway.

He had to warn them.

“I am aware this might not be your priority right now,” he admitted. “But you have to know there’s something really wrong with…”

“We don’t care,” Sam cut him off, exasperated. “Listen, we helped you regain control over Hell, we help you put Lucifer back in the Cage…”

“You won’t tell me where the child is,” Crowley pointed out.

“Because you’re probably going to do something nefarious to it,” Sam replied. “We’re trying to work on a cure for our mother, so unless you can help with that, you can stop bothering us about whatever it is that you think it’s wrong.”

Crowley sighed and reminded himself that sometimes, on occasion, those boys could be really useful.

“Fine,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He flew out of the bunker before he regretted it. It was sad that those days the only other person he could talk about these sorts of things was his own mother, but he figured Rowena would understand.

She was sunbathing with an antiquated swimsuit on the edge of the pool in the mansion Crowley had acquired for her. One of the demons that Crowley had assigned to her offered her on a platter and the witch was smiling from ear to ear.

“Fergus!” she exclaimed when she saw him appeared in front of her reclining chair. “How are you my dear? Would you like something to drink? Freddy, here, makes the more amazing margaritas…”

“Scotch. Neat,” Crowley ordered. The demon bowed to him and quickly retreated towards the house. “Hello, mother, how are you recovering?”

“Oh, I’m excellent, my dear, excellent!” Rowena said, pulling her sunglasses up to her head and sitting up. “And I have to say, I love what you’ve done with this place, but I have some ideas for the second floor…”

“Mother…”

“… this would have to be after the Grand Tour I’m planning for next year, of course, but with some demonic input on your part…”

“Mother, I need your help.”

That shocked Rowena into silence. For once.

“Really?” She covered her chest with her hands. “You’re asking me for help? Oh, Fergus!”

Luckily, Freddy returned with his Scotch to break up the sappiness of the moment. Crowley snapped his fingers and made one of the nearby chairs get behind him so he could seat comfortably.

“This is about Castiel and that spell of his,” he started saying.

He told Rowena everything Castiel had done that night and what he had seen or rather, what he hadn’t seen. Rowena kept sipping her margarita, but when he reached the part of how the spell had concluded, she put it down and stared at him with both her eyebrows shooting up.

“That is very unusual,” she commented.

“I’m aware,” Crowley replied. “Which is why I’m coming to you. I thought it might have been an effect of Enochian magic, but I’m not… entirely sure. Lucifer is tricky and we cannot exactly ask him if something went wrong or not.”

Rowena bit into the lime, as if that would help her think for a moment.

“You’re worried about your friend,” she pointed out.

“Castiel made it very clear we are not, and will never be, friends,” Crowley replied, coldly. “But I’m worried if this spell doesn’t really resuscitate demons, I might need to look for another way next time someone gets uppity about my throne and tries to assassinate me.”

“Of course. You have to be prepared for everything.”

There was something insincere in his words and Crowley couldn’t know if she was mocking him or not. He was used enough to the first, coming from her, but things had… changed, whether Castiel believed it or not, enough that he had to wonder if there might have been some truth to that assessment.

Maybe he was concerned for the angel, after all.

Rowena stood up, wrapped herself in her silk robe and pushed her hair back.

“Well, let’s go into my studio and try to figure this out,” she said. “I’m going to need you to remember the exact words of the spell.”

***

“Doctor said they both seemed to be doing good for now. He didn’t see anything abnormal about mom or the baby.”

Sam sighed of relief to hear that. Maybe the kid wouldn’t be as much a threat as Dean had feared after all.

“Alright, thank you, Jody. Lore indicated that Nephilim are usually premature and, uh…”

“We know,” Jody said. “We’re helping Kelly record messages for him and all of that. It’s… it’s a process, alright.”

Sam couldn’t imagine. Jody had lost her son years ago, then recovered it, then lost him again, along with her husband. This must have been hard on her, but it was incredible that she and Donna had stepped up to care for Kelly.

“We’ll call you if anything seems to go awry,” Jody promised. “How are things over there?”

Dean screwed the lid on the machine and turned it on. It purred to life and he smiled, showing Sam two thumbs up.

“We think we’re making progress,” Sam explained. “We just need some dream root and maybe we’ll able to access Mary’s… mom’s memories and recover them. At least she’s not trying to escape anymore.”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s progress alright,” Jody said. “Keep me updated.”

“Yeah. You too. Thank you.”

Sam ended the call and moved to sit in front of Dean, still busy with the “mind machine”, as he had taken to call it.

“Do you feel like maybe we should be helping over there?” Sam asked.

“Well, what could we do? We don’t know the first thing about babies,” Dean replied. “And besides, if someone can raise the little monster to be nothing like his dad, that would be Jody and Donna.”

There was no arguing there. And besides, they had their hands full already.

“Dream root shipment should be here tomorrow,” Sam commented.

“And then it’ll be showtime,” Dean agreed. He put down the screwdriver and looked up at him. “So, uh… which of us should do it?”

“Go into mom’s mind, you mean?” Sam asked. He sighed and leaned back on the chair. “It has to be you. I mean, you… knew her.”

“Yeah, when I was a kid.”

“You knew her more than I did,” Sam pointed out. “That counts for something, Dean.”

Dean seemed skeptical. He looked at the machine and opened his mouth to say something…

Three knocks on the bunker’s door interrupted him. The brothers glanced at each other. They weren’t waiting for anyone, were they? Dean grabbed his pistol and tucked it on the back of his jeans before standing up to go open.

To their surprise, Castiel was at their doorstep, with a beam upon his face.

“Hello!”

“Hey, Cas…” Dean managed to say, before Cas threw his arms around him and pulled him for a hug. “Woah, okay… dude, we saw each other two days ago.”

Castiel ignored him as he moved to hug Sam. His arms closed tight around him, and even when he stepped back, Sam could tell he was exulting.

“Did the spell work?” he asked.

“Did it work!”

Castiel threw his head back and laughed, something the brothers hadn’t seen him do… maybe ever?

But then he did something Sam found very strange: he looked to the empty space at his side and spoke.

“He asked if it worked!” he said, and dissolved into giggles, as if Sam had just told him the best joke he’d ever heard.

Sam was relieved to see that Dean was just as confused as him.

“Yeah, we’re… asking. Did you manage to bring Meg back?”

“Of course I did!” Castiel said, laughing still. “She’s right here!”

“She is?” Sam craned his neck, fully expecting to see Meg stepped out from behind Cas and greet them with a smoky ‘ _Hello, boys._ ’

But nothing happened.

Castiel smiled decayed a little.

“Yes.” He waved his hand at the empty space at his side. “Right here,” he insisted.

Sam wanted to believe him. He really did, because he was Cas and this was Meg they were talking about. He would never joke about something as important to him as that.

But there was nothing by his side.

“Umh… Cas, there’s nothing there,” Dean said.

“What do you mean?” Castiel’s frowned came back. “She’s here. She just… she just said you were a moron.”

“Okay, that’s uncalled for… invisible, silent Meg!” Dean accused her, lifting a finger.

“You’re pointing above her head,” Castiel said. His enthusiasm now was completely gone. “You really can’t see her at all? Or hear her?”

Well, the brothers had dealt with stranger things.

Cas insisted on moving a chair for Meg. Sam watched it closely, but he didn’t see the cushion sinking as if someone was sitting on top of it and, to his eyes, the chair remained perfectly immobile.

“She said maybe it’s because she hasn’t… finished coming back,” Castiel told them. “I’ve been avoiding touching her, because she says she doesn’t feel… entirely here. Maybe I can see her because I’m an angel and you aren’t.”

“So… what, she’s some sort of… demon ghost? A ghost demon?” Dean suggested. “A ghostmon?”

Castiel stared at the empty chair for a moment and Sam had the distinct impression he was exchanging an exasperated look with Meg.

“Something like that, maybe,” Castiel conceded.

“Okay,” Sam said, trying not to let his doubts reflect in his voice. “Umh… is there something we can do to… help her… transition into… being solid?”

Castiel leaned his head towards the empty chair again.

“I don’t think there is, no,” he said. “Maybe just… give her some time.”

“Yeah, sure, okay,” both brothers mumbled at the same time.

Castiel smiled once again. He seemed… peaceful.

“Thank you. You are… truly the best friends someone could ask for.”

He then chuckled, and of course, Sam figured Meg had made a joke they’d completely missed. Castiel stood up and left to the kitchen, speaking softly to himself… or to Meg as he walked away from them.

“Well, that _is_ weird,” Dean said, as soon as they thought Castiel was out of earshot. Though, with him being an angel, that always wasn’t a certain thing.

“Yeah… a little _too_ weird,” Sam pointed out. He looked over his shoulder, but Castiel had disappeared inside the kitchen. He still leaned closer to Dean and lowered his voice as he spoke. “Dean, I don’t know if… if this is actually happening?”

“What do you mean? If Cas says he sees her, then he sees her.” Dean shrugged.

“Yes, and I believe he believes it too,” Sam assured him. “But there’s believing it and then there’s… well…”

“You don’t think she’s a ghostmon?”

Sam decided to leave the fight about how stupid that name was for another moment.

“If she was a… a ghostmon,” he said, sighing, “she would still be able to interact somehow, with the world around her.”

“I mean, not if she’s too weak for it,” Dean pointed out. “The ghosts we’ve seen that can touch things and like, kill people, they had years to gather their strength.”

“So, you think Meg will eventually become strong enough to possess another body?”

“God, I hope so,” Dean said, leaning back in his chair and grabbing his beer. “Can you imagine the level of blue balls Cas must be suffering right now?”

That was the furthest thing from Sam’s mind, truly. There was another detail that was bothering.

“If she is a ghost, if she come back as just as soul, but she is still a demon… how come Cas can’t see her true form? Do you think he’s thought about it?”

“Maybe he _is_ seeing her true form and he’s into that. I don’t kinkshame.”

Sam rubbed his eyes.

“But, Dean…”

“Sam,” Dean interrupted him. “Can’t a nice happen to one of us? Any of us? For once?”

And Sam understood why Dean was being so obtuse about it. Everything that had happened, with the Men of Letters, with their mom, and Lucifer, and just how defeated Cas had been during the previous year… it was all getting to him.

“Yeah.” Sam sighed and stretched his arms above his head. “Yeah, that’s… we’re just… happy that he’s happy, right? He is happy, isn’t he?”

His deep guttural laughter came floating towards them from the kitchen.

“He sounds happy,” Dean concluded.

And maybe, for now, that was enough.


	4. Chapter 4

Mary stumbled into the kitchen, interrupting the joke Meg was telling him. Both her and Castiel turned to the hunter. It was the middle of the night after a very complicated day. Castiel was more surprised than anything to see her there.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“It’s fine,” Castiel assured her.

“If by fine, you mean annoying as all…” Meg began protesting.

“Be nice, Meg.”

Mary looked at him quizzically before heading for the fridge. Castiel stood close by, trying to give her space.

“How are you doing, Mary?”

“I’m… mostly fine,” she said. She took a pitcher from the fridge and moved to pour herself some water. “I have a terrible headache that won’t let me sleep, but I guess that’s what happens when your sons go into your head to try and recover your memories.”

“I can help with that, if you want.”

“I already took an aspirin. Several, in fact. But thank you.”

She sipped the water. Meg huffed and said what Castiel was thinking:

“Is every Winchester a martyr or do you think they just… enjoy the pain?”

“Don’t be mean, Meg,” Castiel chastised her. Mary looked over his shoulder for a second, like she was expecting to see her, but of course, she couldn’t.

“How are you? Dean mentioned something about your… invisible girlfriend.”

Meg scoffed and Castiel tried, and failed, not to laugh at her reaction.

“Yes, it’s… a very peculiar situation. It’s fine. I’m used to seeing things others can’t appreciate.”

Mary hummed and drank some more of her water.

“It must be nice, to have her back in some form,” she commented. “If I could bring John back, I… well, I guess it doesn’t do anyone any good to think about it, does it now?”

“I… I spent so much time grieving her,” Castiel said, turning to Meg. “It seems almost a miracle that she’s here.”

“You’re a sap, Clarence,” she said, but she was smiling as she did.

Castiel smiled, but then found himself wishing he had hadn’t. Mary seemed a little awkward when he did. He had noticed Sam and Dean did too, and he figured it must have been something to do with only hearing half of the conversation he was having with Meg all the time.

“I think maybe we shouldn’t get out of the room much,” he told her once Mary left them alone again. “I wouldn’t want them to feel uncomfortable.”

“Honestly, I couldn’t give less of a crap,” Meg replied, rolling her eyes. “I’m here and they’re going to have to deal with it.”

Castiel chuckled to himself. Because of course she would say that.

Meg smiled and took a step closer to him.

“So, I’m your girlfriend, huh?”

Castiel pulled from his shirt’s neck, a little embarrassed.

“I know you wouldn’t like a title like that, but if they have to call you something…”

“No, it’s fine.” Meg smiled up at him. “I like it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, sounds nice. I’ve never been anyone’s girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Castiel laughed again. He was doing it so much those days, but it was really hard to stop when she was always saying funny, beautiful things. “I have never been anyone’s boyfriend, either.”

“Well, that’s changed now, isn’t it?” Meg licked her lips. “Because you’re mine.”

Castiel shivered. There was something possessive and intense about the way those words had fallen from her mouth, and he wasn’t sure he disliked it, exactly.

Since leaving Heaven, he hadn’t really belonged anywhere, and even before that he’d always known on some level that he didn’t fit in there either. Sam and Dean were his friends; they had given him a place among them, but so many things about Earth still seemed so strange to him.

He liked the idea that he belonged with Meg, that he belonged _to_ Meg. That finally, after so many years of heartbreak and loneliness, he had someone that was entirely his and he was entirely hers in return.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Clarence?”

“I wish I could kiss you,” he told her, without even thinking about it.

Meg sighed, tiredly.

“I know. I wish it too.” She came as close to him as they could without their skins touching. If she had been breathing, he could have felt her breath tingling on his neck and she said: “Soon, though. Soon.”

* * *

Rowena entered the bunker with her cape floating behind her, like a queen about to hold court.

“So nice to see you, Sam!” she said, putting her hand on his cheek. “How you’ve been? How’s your dear old mom? Did the dream root work?”

“It did,” Sam said, smiling at her. Despite everything they had gone through together, or maybe because of it, he couldn’t help but to really appreciate Rowena’s friendship. “She recovered her memories and she is doing much better. She’s out with Dean getting some groceries right now.”

“I’m so glad to hear that…”

Someone cleared their throat behind her. Sam frowned.

“Crowley?”

“Moose.” Crowley stepped up behind his mother. “Is the angel home?”

“Umh…”

That was a complicated question. Not because Castiel wasn’t there, because he was, but at the same time he… really wasn’t.

Since the moment he had returned with “Meg” in tow, he had been absentminded and distant. At first Sam had attributed to them having things they needed to catch up, but she was apparently around him all of the time. It was understandable, of course, as he was the only one who could see her and actually maintain a conversation with her, but with the passing days it had become… strange.

“When we talk to him, it’s always like he isn’t listening to us,” he confided on Rowena and Crowley once they were all down in the library. “He’s always laughing at something Meg said. I’ve asked him a couple of times if he knows where she was before he pulled her back, but he keeps saying she isn’t ready to talk about it. And when he isn’t here, he’s usually locked away in his room, with… her. We hear him talking, but she… she doesn’t seem to be getting more visible or strong enough to possess another body.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Crowley said. “Because she isn’t really there.”

Sam didn’t have a hard time believing that. Maybe because, in the back of his mind, he already suspected something like that.

Rowena put a notebook over the table.

“We had to go by phonetics, because Fergus’ Enochian is not that great.”

Crowley groaned, but he didn’t correct her on the matter.

“And then we have to cross-reference the words on the spell several times,” Rowena continued explaining. “As you know, it’s a very complicated language, flowery, with a lot of… meanings.”

“So, what are you saying? That the spell Lucifer gave him wasn’t legit?” Sam asked, because that was would make more sense. One last screwing by the Devil on their family, it made perfect sense it would be that way.

But then, who was Cas talking to all that time?

“Nay, it was,” Rowena assured him. “It just didn’t mean what Castiel thought it meant. This word right here,” she said, pointing at a scribble in her notebook. “It can mean ‘missing’ or ‘thinking of’. But ‘thinking of’, for angels… they’re creatures of pure intent, Sam. They don’t feel and think the way we do, and even Cas, as much time as he’s spent on Earth, he’s still an angel.”

“I don’t understand where you’re going with this.”

“The spell has two meanings,” Crowley said. “One of them was to ‘bring to life the one the caster is thinking of’. The other is… to bring their _thoughts_ to life.”

Sam understood.

And it all made sense suddenly.

“She’s not… she’s not _real_. She’s just a figment of Castiel’s imagination. Like… a very vivid hallucination, maintained by the spell.”

“Aye.” Rowena’s eyes were sad as she raised them towards Sam. “And we think it’ll eventually damage your angel in some way. That must have been Lucifer’s intentions all along.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair, as the thought of in exactly how much trouble Castiel finally dawned on him.

“But he… he said he heard her voice, even before all of this. That was why he was convinced she wasn’t really gone.”

“He must have been hallucinating her even then,” Crowley concluded. “This just… deepened the process.”

“Is there… is there a way to break it?” Sam asked.

Rowena tapped her fingers against the table.

“Maybe,” she concluded. “The real question is… is he going to want us to break it?”

Castiel’s laughter came echoing from the hall.

And Sam knew the answer to that already.

* * *

“They are a little… apprehensive, aren’t they?”

“What do you mean?”

They were sitting side by side on his bed, watching TV. There were many TV shows Castiel wanted to share with her, many he knew that she would enjoy immensely. He enjoyed seeing her watching them, even though he didn’t exactly enjoy the realities and contest shows she liked. It was just… so good to see her smile, to listen to her snarky comments about all the participants. It was really the best feeling in the world.

Well, as good as it could be. He remembered being in that same room, his body against hers, the soft feeling of her locks tangled in his fingers, the warmth of her kisses. It hadn’t been a real memory, of course, but something that Lucifer had created to keep him distracted.

But still, the thought that this had been as close as they could be… tormented him, slightly.

He needed her so much sometimes it hurt to even look at her.

Meg toyed with her own hair for a moment.

“About me,” she said. “I don’t think they like having me here.”

That shocked Castiel enough to reach for the remote and pause the show.

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, I know they’re not ignoring me because they _want_ to,” she pointed. “But I think even once I get an actual body, they’re not going to be exactly happy about it. I mean, I did kill several of their friends.”

“That was before,” Castiel said, with conviction. “It was a war; we were soldiers on different sides of the conflict. Things have changed.”

“Dean might never forgive me,” Meg pointed out. “But that’s okay. I’m not sure I want him to. It’s just… when I actually get to… have a body again and all of that, maybe we should consider… I don’t know, getting our own place, maybe?”

Castiel stared at her, stunned.

“You’re asking us to move in together?”

He didn’t think he would live to see the day Meg would look as flustered as she did right now.

“I mean, if you want to. We could. Somewhere nice, with a view. I don’t need much, really. Just some privacy and a sturdy bed.”

Castiel looked at her, letting her take his breath again one more time.

“I think I would really like that.” He inched closer to her on the bed, to the point where he could have just pulled her in towards him if… if… “I really, really wish I could touch you.”

Meg sighed and looked at him with such… hunger in her eyes. The same hunger he was sure that reflected on his.

“I know,” she said. She made a pensive pause. “Though, I guess I can…”

“What?”

A mischievous glimmer appeared in her eye.

“Put on some music.”

Castiel manipulated the control until he found the function on the TV. He didn’t know what Meg was going to do, standing on the carpet next to the bed, but he found himself intrigued.

“Just because we can’t touch doesn’t mean we can’t do anything, right, baby?” Meg asked him. Her hips swayed to the rhythm, seductively, and Castiel felt the heat going through him. “I can give you a peep show… and you can sit back and enjoy yourself…”

“I love you so much,” he murmured as Meg shrugged off her jacket and let it fall to the floor. “I want to be with you… so badly.”

“Soon,” Meg promised him again, still waving her body, drawing his eyes to every curve of it, as she unbuckled her belt and shimmied out of her jeans. “It will be worth the worth, Clarence. I’ll make it worth it.”

Castiel knew she was right. Just the waiting for it, the longing for her, was enough to drive him mad.

But he could live with the madness.

* * *

“So… he’s crazy. Again.”

“It’s more complicated than that, Dean,” Sam told him. They were huddled in the kitchen with their mother, speaking on hushed tones even though Castiel rarely paid attention to them anyway. “Rowena thinks the spell could eventually drive him to… hurt himself. He can talk to her and see her, but he can’t touch her, he can’t… really be with her. And eventually…”

“Eventually he won’t be able to hold back anymore,” Mary said. “He will want to be with her, for real, even if that implies going to the place where she is.”

Dean leaned back on the wall. Sam had seen him defeated many times, and he understood why this time it hit him so hard. They’d just come from two massive victories, expelling the Men of Letters and getting Mary back, and now…

“Dammit, why can’t nothing good last?” he complained. “How do we save him?”

“I asked Rowena if she could find a way and she said she’d look for it,” Sam explained. “But for now, I think we should try talking to him… keeping him distracted, at least.”

“Yeah, that might be more complicated than it sounds,” Dean said. “I walked by his room earlier and he was making some… uh, happy noises. Which… now that you’ve told me this, it’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Can he even… do anything with a hallucination?”

Sam just stared at him in silence, and hoped Dean would figure out he was judging him.

“I was just passing by!” Dean said, raising his hands. “It’s not like I stopped to listen!”

“Regardless,” Sam said, shaking his head. “The point is, we need to help him before this spell finishes taking a hold of him.”

“And if we can’t?” Mary asked.

“Can’t what?” Castiel asked.

Sam was pretty sure the way they all turned to look at him was suspicious as all hell, but Castiel had the same beam he had worn on his face since the moment he had returned to the bunker claiming to be bringing Meg with him.

Dean was the first to recover and he just deflected the question.

“Hey, buddy. Is the missus with you?”

“No, she said her favorite part of the show was about to start,” Castiel replied. “I just took a break because you went quiet all the sudden and I thought maybe something was wrong with Kelly.”

“Oh, no. Jody and Donna are keeping us informed and it all seems to be smooth sailing for now.”

“Good.” He nodded. “That is very good to hear.”

He stood there and the Winchesters stood there, all of them looking at each other as if they had no real idea what to say.

It was really a miracle Castiel didn’t figure out they had been talking about him.

“I think I’ll go back to my room now,” the angel said.

“Cas, wait.” Sam took a step forward. “Uhm… you and Meg had been cooked up in there for days now. Don’t you want to… maybe go out with us?”

“Go out?” Castiel repeated, squinting his eyes as if he’d never heard of the concept before.

“Yeah, you know. About town,” Dean added. “Grab a beer or something.”

“I don’t know about that. I think it would be a bit insensitive to drink or eat when Meg can’t participate in such activities.”

“Well, just don’t bring her along, then.”

Sam elbowed Dean’s ribs and his brother bit back a yelp.

“You don’t want Meg to come?” Castiel sounded a bit offended now.

“No, I mean… she could come with us some other time,” Sam offered. “But we were just thinking about… uh, making it a boys’ night. Just the three of us. Like in the old times!”

Castiel tilted his head, perhaps trying to recall one of said “old times”, and now that he was thinking about it, Sam really couldn’t either. But it didn’t end up mattering, because after a moment, Castiel smiled and nodded.

“Very well. I guess I could do that.”

“Great. I’ll go get the car,” Dean decided.

“I’ll tell Meg. Mary, I know it won’t be exactly easy to communicate with her, but she can’t grab the remote control. Can you just check on her and tell Netflix she’s still watching every now and then?”

Mary seemed just as uncomfortable as them.

“Sure. I’ll… I’ll do that.”

“Thank you. I’ll come back in a minute.”

“Oh, boy,” Dean sighed as soon as the angel was out of the kitchen. “This is going to be _fun_.”

Sam didn’t even try to contradict him.

Castiel took the backseat without asking. He seemed… strangely morose as he did.

“Everything okay, Cas?” Sam asked, as Dean turned on the engine.

“Yes. I think.” Castiel sighed. “I don’t think Meg liked the fact that I’m going out without her. And maybe I shouldn’t. She’s… her situation makes her very lonely and I’m the only one who can keep her company. Maybe this was about idea.”

“No, hey!” Dean said, before Castiel had the chance to teleport out of the car. “Look, I get it, I do. You want her to be comfortable and welcome, and that’s fine, but also, it’s not healthy for couples to be together all the damn time.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. You have to take care of your friendships too,” Sam agreed.

Castiel reflected upon this while looking out the window at the passing trees.

“I guess you might be right. I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel like our friendship is not as important,” he said in the end. “I am… this is the first time I’ve been in love and there’s still a lot I have to learn to navigate.”

Sam felt his heart skip a beat.

He’d known. For years, he’d known that Cas was hurting, that he missed Meg, that he was ceaselessly looking for a way to bring her back while helping them with their constant battles and problems at the same time.

And it didn’t seem fair. It wasn’t fair that she wasn’t really back and this was slowly driving him insane and…

When they saved him from Lucifer’s spell, they would have to find a way to help him. They owed him as much.

Dean curled up his mouth, but he made no comment about what Castiel had just said. Perhaps that was for the best.

The bar was only half full, so they were able to find a table on a quiet corner after grabbing their beers. Sam and Dean tried to keep the conversation going about any topic, really — a hunt they had been on, how Mary was feeling after recovering her memories, some rumor they’d heard about an upcoming concert.

Somehow, Castiel managed to always return the topic to Meg. “I’m sure she would like to come along” or “Meg said she would teach me how to play pool”.

It was both exhausting and heartbreaking. And after a couple shots and three beers, it was clear that Dean was growing increasingly irritated.

“You have a problem with the bunker?” he asked when Cas mentioned the possibility of him and Meg moving out. “Sorry, does _she_ have a problem with it?”

“No, not at all, and you know I will always be a phone call away, Dean,” Castiel replied. “But… we’re starting our lives together. We need our own space.”

“Dude, you’re talking like you want to marry her!”

“Marriages are human rituals that would be essentially meaningless to creatures that live for as long and Meg and I do,” Castiel pointed out. “But maybe just… a small celebration. When she has a body again and can drink and… dance…”

He blushed a little and laughed to himself. Sam wasn’t sure he understood the joke.

“Yeah… about that,” he started, speaking very slowly. He felt like he was approaching a very frightened, very hurt animal, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt him. If he lashed out, if they weren’t careful, Castiel could retreat further into his delusion and there would be no way to break him out of it then. “When do you think that might happen?”

Castiel blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… I know she hasn’t been back for that long, but shouldn’t she be, I don’t know, gaining some strength, maybe? Enough to touch things by herself or… manifest in the physical plane in some other way?”

Castiel leaned back on the chair.

“You think she isn’t trying?”

“I didn’t say that,” Sam replied, taken aback by the defensiveness in Cas’ tone. “Look, I know you’re very happy to have her back and you’ve been busy catching up and all of that. But…”

“Yeah, we don’t think she’s trying,” Dean interrupted him. Sam glared at him, but his brother ignored him. “We think she just has you enthralled and you don’t even notice certain things.”

“Dean…”

“What things?” Castiel asked. His face was expressionless, but the tone of his voice indicated that Dean needed to tread very carefully now.

“Like the fact you’re living in the largest American repository of occult knowledge,” Dean pointed out. “If there’s a way to fix Meg’s ghostmon situation, it’s probably in our archives somewhere. And neither of you has even thought about asking for our help.”

Castiel’s shoulders relaxed a little.

“You’re right,” he admitted, with a sigh. “I was caught in the euphoria of her being back and sort of hoping the problem would fix itself. But you’re right. The sooner we start searching for a solution, the sooner we can find one, right?”

“Right,” Dean said. The bitterness in his voice was only apparent to Sam.

“I need to take a leak,” he said. “Dean, come with me.”

“What are we, middle-school girls?” Dean protested, but Sam shut him up with a glare. “Alright, fine.”

“I’ll get us another beer,” Cas decided.

Luckily for them, there was no one in the bathroom, so they could speak openly.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Pacing myself? I don’t want Cas to have to fly us back home…”

“No, I mean… bringing it up like that.”

“Sam, were you listening to him? He was bringing Meg up _all the time_ ,” Dean said. “This spell is really taking a hold and maybe if he works with us, we won’t have to break it to him. Maybe he’ll figure it out by himself. He’s a smart dude.”

“Yeah, maybe. And maybe that’ll send him spiraling down into another crisis,” Sam countered. “You saw him last year.”

“You think he’s healthy now?”

There was really no arguing there. Sam breathed out, very slowly.

“I’m just saying, maybe have him figure it out won’t be the best way. He’ll feel insulted that we knew and we just didn’t tell him the truth.”

“We should worry about it when we get to that point.” Dean sighed and leaned against the wall. “Right now, though…”

Cas burst in through the door. The concern up on his face was so patent that for a second, Sam feared he had heard them and was there to demand an explanation on what they were talking about.

Then he noticed he had Dean’s phone in his hand.

“It’s Jody,” he informed them. “She said Kelly’s going into labor.”

Sam and Dean both stiffened up immediately.

Delivering a Nephilim into the world was extremely dangerous. The mother never survived the process, that without counting…

“The cabin is warded, but she said the first contraction alone caused a huge surge of energy that knocked out the lights all of South Dakota,” Castiel continued. “Which means…”

“Every angel, demon and nasty thing trying to get its paws on the baby just got a flare up of where it might be,” Dean understood.

“We have to go help them.”

Castiel turned around and looked over his shoulder.

“This is the men’s bathroom,” he said.

No one else had walked in and the comment was so out of place it took a second for Sam to catch up.

“Is Meg here?”

“She says Mary got a similar call and she’s on her way to the cabin,” Castiel said. “We have to go, too. I can’t fly us there because of the wards, but I can get us and the car in the near proximity. We can drive the rest of the way.”

“Well, at least you’re still efficient even though you’re entirely cuckoo,” Dean commented.

Sam threw him an alarmed look and Castiel frowned.

“What do you mean?”

Dean blinked at them, as if he was only just realizing what he’d said.

“I mean… you know… love makes you crazy. Whatever, let’s get going.”

It was a surreal experience to get on the car and start driving in one state, and then to blink and be in another one entirely. Castiel wasn’t joking when he said that the surge had knocked the lights out of the entire state: every single streetlight they passed was off. The stars in the sky glimmered and they could see the silhouettes of the towns they were passing by in the distance, but nothing else. The only illumination they counted on where the Impala’s own headlights.

It was eerie. Sam had seen all sorts of horrors and nightmares in his life, but this… quietness, this stillness, chilled him to the bone. Whatever this child was or would become, the world wouldn’t be the same after he was born.

“No, I don’t know if it will have his father’s wings,” Castiel said, suddenly. “I’m… not even sure that it will have wings.”

Dean gripped the wheel tighter.

“Cas, can you stop?”

“Dean…” Sam tried to warn him.

“We’re heading at full throttle to protect a little abomination from every demon and angel paying an ounce to attention,” Dean told him. “We need him on his A-game.”

“You think Meg will be a distraction for me?” Castiel asked.

“Yes, I do think that.”

“Dean, she won’t even need me to protect her. Not really.”

“No, of course. Because she’s not really here.”

“Dean!” Sam let out.

“Look, we were going to be gentle about this, but circumstances have changed,” Dean replied. “She’s not real, Cas. She’s not here.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” Castiel replied. He didn’t sound angry or distressed, just very confused. “Of course she is. Just because you can’t see her it doesn’t mean…”

“It’s a spell, Cas. A hallucination,” Dean told him. “You have to snap out of it, or we’re all going to die walking into this mess.”

Castiel scoffed.

“I’m sorry, Meg,” he said, turning to the empty space beside him in the backseat. “You know how rude he can be.”

Dean gritted his teeth and Sam sighed and looked out of the window for a moment. He wasn’t sure Dean had the right idea. Yes, Cas needed to be aware of his surroundings, but at the same time, he couldn’t be in a crisis when he confronted all of his brothers and sisters.

“No, I know that. I know,” Castiel said. The smile on his face as he kept talking with the air was bittersweet. “When this is over, we will figure out a solution. I promise you this.”

“Unbelievable,” Dean muttered under his breath.

“You’re unbelievable,” Castiel replied, now rising his tone a bit. “I knew you were just pretending to be happy about me and Meg. You never liked her.”

“Not that you’re wrong, but this is literally not what this is about,” Dean shot back. “Come on, Cas, just… snap out of it. I’m begging you; we can’t do this without you.”

“I am right here!”

“Are you?” Dean asked, and as if to confirm his suspicions, Castiel turned once again to the side to listen to what “Meg” had to say.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be,” Castiel said, still looking at the Meg they couldn’t see, at the Meg in his head. “Maybe we shouldn’t. When this is over, we’ll go. We’ll find a solution on our own.”

“Cas, you can’t do that,” Sam said, with his stomach becoming a sudden knot of terror at the idea. Castiel, slipping further and further into his delusion, until…

“Why not? You’re obviously not ready to accept her. To accept us. You call yourself my friends, but you would deny what makes me happy.”

“We’re not trying to do that, Cas, we’re trying to help,” Sam insisted.

“Then, why would you say she’s not real?” Castiel asked. He sounded angrier not than ever. “Why would you…?”

His voice broke. He shook his head and again turned to where he thought Meg was.

And Sam knew, that somewhere, in the back of his mind, perhaps, Castiel knew the truth. All that talk about Meg being his girlfriend, about them living together, about “celebrating their love”… it was out of character for her. She never would be that corny with anyone, not even with him.

And they all knew it.

The delusion was starting to break and they had about an hour until they were at the cabin and God only knew how long until the angels and demons showed up to try and get the Nephilim. It was now or never.

Sam took out his cellphone and called Mary.

“Mom, you’re on speaker,” he informed her. “We’re on our way to South Dakota.”

“What?” Mary asked. “Why? Did something happen with Kelly?”

Sam explained to her quickly what Jody had relied to them.

“She didn’t call you?”

“No!” she said. “I’m going right now. I don’t know if I can there in time, but I’ll try.”

“Alright. Thank you, mom.”

“Boys,” she said right before Sam ended the call: “Take care of yourselves.”

“You too, mom,” Dean replied.

Sam looked at Cas on the rearview mirror. His eyes were opened wide in shock.

“She… but Meg said Jody did call her. That’s how she knew to come find us in the bar,” he argued, though his voice sounded weak. “Why would she lie? Why would you lie?”

Obviously, the empty seat offered no answer.

“She didn’t lie. It was just your mind trying to fix the plot holes,” Sam explained. “Meg only knows what you know, but you were trying to make sense of her knowing something you wouldn’t know. Because she’s in your head. She is… your thoughts come to life.”

As soon as he said that phrase, something changed in Cas’ expression. It was like a puzzle piece fell into place. He knew, as he was moving his lips, that he was going over the spell again. And that Rowena had been right.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” Sam said.

But the angel wasn’t listening to them. He was looking at his side once again.

“Tell me it isn’t true.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Tell me,” he begged. “Please, tell me it isn’t true.”

Meg seemed indignant.

“It’s not!” she insisted, like she had all the time Sam had been speaking. “Of course it isn’t! I’m here, Cas. I’m with you.”

Cas wanted to believe that. The easiest thing in the world would’ve been for him to believe that. To find another argument, another way to prove Sam wrong, to…

“Cas, come on,” Meg said. “I love you.”

Her words cut him like a knife. Through his ribs, through everything.

“No,” he replied. “That’s what I wanted you to say. You would never… you’d never say it.”

“Well, you know. Death changes a demon,” she argued.

Cas swallowed.

“Where were you?” he asked her. “When you died, when the blade went through you. Where did you go? Before I called you out of the shadows, where were you?”

“I was with you. You heard me.”

“No. You were just a voice in my head. You were what I wanted to hear.”

Meg shook her head and scoffed.

“Fine. I was in that… Primordial Emptiness that Amara talked about. Can we please not talk about that?”

Amara presupposed it. She didn’t know for sure that was where demons went. No one knew. Not even Lucifer, perhaps.

He never should’ve trusted him.

“Why don’t you want to talk about it?”

“Because it’s not a nice thing to remember!”

“You don’t remember what it was like… or you don’t know?” Castiel pointed out, “Because _I_ have never been there.”

Meg shook her head again. It was hard to tell in the darkened backseat of the Impala, but Castiel was almost sure her eyes were brimming with tears.

“What do you want me to say?” she begged. Her voice sounded so… betrayed, so tired. And it broke Castiel’s heart.

“The truth.”

Meg swallowed. Her eyes fell on him, her face clear. Her hair… it had changed. It was no longer gold, but dark brown, the way it had been before Crowley had forced the change on her.

“I can only tell you what you already know,” she admitted.

He still didn’t know. Even as the evidence began mounting up, even as his gut knew, and his head knew… he just couldn’t convince his heart that this was the truth.

Perhaps… if he tried the one thing he had longed for since he saw her face again…

“All this time, you told me not to touch you. Why?”

“Because if you do, I will disappear,” she told him. And there, finally, there was some truth. “And I don’t want to go, Clarence. I want to stay with you. Please.”

There it was, finally; some semblance of the truth. Or at least, the truth as Castiel suspected it.

“I want you to stay too,” he said. “I want this so much, Meg.”

“Then just… just don’t,” she begged him. “Just let me stay. Even if it’s pretend, it’s still real to you, right?”

It was tempting. More than anything else that have ever tempted Castiel before. But…

“It would be selfish. You… the real you, is still trapped wherever she is. And I would be only indulging in her memory without helping her.”

The line of her mouth became cruel now.

“And what if you can’t bring _her_ back?” she asked him. “What if, even if you do, she isn’t like me? What if she doesn’t love you like me? Have you considered that?”

He was doing so, now. And it would hurt. It would hurt like Hell. But even still…

“I owe her that much.”

Meg scoffed.

“And what if you just can’t bring her back?” she asked, her words sharpening now. “What if the only way you can really be with her is… to go where she is?”

“By dying, you mean.”

“Yes.”

Castiel reflected upon this.

“I don’t know if angels and demons go to the same place. I would hope so. But I don’t know where she is.” He sighed and lifted his hand. “Neither do you.”

“Don’t,” she begged when she realized what was about to happen. “Please, don’t…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Clarence. Cas. Baby, please.”

His words came out like a broken sob.

“Goodbye, Meg.”

She disappeared as soon as his fingertips grazed her face. His body knew what his mind refused to accept. He couldn’t touch her, smell her, taste her. She wasn’t there. She never had been.

Lucifer had tricked him and he was alone. He had been alone, all along.

The sob that came to his throat was unlike any sound he’d made before. It wasn’t just grief and loss and anger he was experiencing.

It was the same despair, the same terrible emptiness he’d felt when Amara told him there was no way to bring Meg back to him.

* * *

Cas stayed quiet the rest of the way. Sam couldn’t be sure, but he had the distinct impression that he was crying, silently, with his forehead pressed against the window. He didn’t say anything, but at least he wasn’t talking to “Meg” anymore. Dean had his hands gripped tight around the wheel and his mouth twitched in the way it did when he wanted to say something, but wouldn’t because he knew it would only make things much worse.

Sam knew right away the plans had backfired. How the hell were they supposed to win this thing when their best fighter was a mess? How were they supposed to hold off the angels long enough for Jody and Donna to take the baby to safety?

The Impala’s wheel bit on the dirt road that lead to Jody’s cabin, finally. They saw the illuminated windows on the distance, but the car slowed down before they could get too close.

“Dude, why are you stopping?”

“I’m not!” Dean said. And it was true: he was pushing the pedal down and the engine was roaring, but the wheels just weren’t spinning.

“It’s because of me,” Castiel intervened. His voice sounded… almost normal. Both brothers turned to look at him in the backseat. “The wards won’t let you come anywhere closer while I’m here.”

“Oh. Okay.” Dean turned off the engine. “Umh… how are you feeling, Cas?”

Castiel just glared at him until Dean shrunk.

“We had to tell you,” he said. “We couldn’t just let you…”

“You did the right thing,” Castiel interrupted him. “It’s better that I knew the truth. If I had marched into battle expecting Meg to back me up or been distracted by her…”

His tone of voice was entirely flat and Sam had the distinct impression he wasn’t being honest with them.

“Cas…” he started, but he really didn’t know what to say. What could he even tell a friend whose heart they’d just broken?

“Go,” Castiel told them. “I will stand guard here.”

“I don’t think you should be alone right now, buddy,” Dean tried to argue.

Castiel didn’t say anything to that. He just reached for the handle and stepped outside. The brothers looked at each other, but they really had no other choice but to follow suit. Castiel stretched his hands towards the cabin and for a few seconds, the barrier keeping the cabin safe materialize with a blue light, a small wall of magic and blue energy that disappeared as soon as he moved his hand away.

“It’s not as sturdy as it could be,” Castiel determined. “Enough angels using their power against it could knock it down. You should be prepared to use blood sigils in case it falls.”

“But that would blast you away too, Cas,” Sam pointed out.

“It could blast away the kid, too, if there’s enough angel in him,” Dean added.

“At least he will be out of their reach then.” Castiel turned towards them. Sam hadn’t realized when his angel blade had fallen in his hand but there it was.

For the first time in Sam wasn’t sure how long, he looked every bit like the soldier he had always been.

“I’ll hold them off. You protect the others.”

“You want us to leave you out here?” Dean asked, with a note of indignation on his voice. “So you will be what, bait?”

“A distraction, yes.”

“Cas, this is suicide!” Sam protested.

“It’s what I have to do,” Castiel replied. “We decided to protect this child so neither Heaven nor Hell could use it for their purposes. Are you changing your minds now?”

“No, of course not, but…”

Castiel grabbed each of them by one shoulder… and pushed them away.

Sam stumbled backwards and looked at Castiel, disoriented. Then he understood: they were past the barrier the sigils had formed. Castiel couldn’t follow them know even if he wanted to.

A faint scream came from the cabin. It sounded muffled and distant, but unmistakable. The barrier waved and shivered, but didn’t disappear.

“Go,” Castiel told them. “You’re needed there.”

And with that, he turned around and ignored them. Standing guard, stiff and indifferent.

Sam and Dean looked at each other, but they really had no choice. They walked towards the cabin, but the door opened before they could even knock on it.

“You’re here!” Jody exclaimed with relief. She gave them both a quick hug and ushered them inside. “I was beginning to worry something had happened to you on the way here…”

“No, just…” Dean started but went quiet. They weren’t about to divulge Cas’ business like that to everybody. “How is she?”

As it to answer his question, another moan and a sob came from the room behind them.

“She’s been like this for four hours,” Jody told them. “They’re still not five minutes apart, but they’re getting there.”

“Is it supposed to last that long?”

Jody stared at him with an eyebrow crooked, as if to indicate Dean was an idiot for even asking something like that.

“Donna and I are going to be with her all the way through,” she told them.

“So you need us to stand guard in case anything comes,” Sam guessed.

“Basically.” Jody took a deep breath. “And if anything happens…”

“We’ll be fine,” Dean promised her. “Baby’s gonna be fine. We’re all going to be.”

He said it with a lot more confidence than Sam felt, but he understood why. Jody was pale and she kept balling her hands up in fists, and letting them out. She was nervous, scared, and Sam couldn’t blame her.

They really had no idea what was about to come out of Kelly.

“Yeah, of course,” she said, smiling wearily. “Do you want to come and say hello?”

Sam wasn’t sure their presence would be all that welcome in that space, but they followed Jody into the room anyway. Kelly was leaning over on the bed, paler even than Jody. Her hair and the nightgown she wore were covered in sweat and she seemed to be leaning entirely on Donna, who pressed a sponge to her forehead and whispered calming words to her over and over:

“It’s going to be fine. Your baby is going to be fine; you’ll see.”

“Kelly, look,” Jody said, trying to sound way lighter than she perhaps should have. “Sam and Dean are here. They’re going to make sure everything goes fine.”

Kelly looked at them with eyes shiny from the pain.

“Castiel?” she managed to breathe out.

“He’s right outside,” Sam told her. “We’re all here for you, okay?”

Kelly took in a deep, shuddering breath and managed to mutter:

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Dean repeated. He clearly didn’t know if it was appropriate to smile or not. What did you say to a woman who was about to die? “We’ll, uh… we’ll go to double check all the sigils and wards, okay?”

“Tell us if you need us to do anything,” Sam added.

“Thank you, guys,” Jody said.

She closed the door behind them.

“Well, damn,” Dean mumbled. “Are we sure there’s anything we _can_ do?”

“Provide moral support?” Sam suggested, and realized how ridiculous it was to ask that of the guys who had just emotionally destroyed their best friend. He came closer to the window and looked outside, but the woods were too dark to make out Castiel’s form out there. “How do you think he’s doing?”

Dean sighed and shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe you were right. Whatever he said, it… I shouldn’t have told him.”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t,” Sam agreed. Dean stared at him incredulous, like he was expecting Sam to assuage his guilt instead. But Sam just couldn’t bring himself to do that. “You’ll have to apologize to him later.”

“Yeah,” Dean mumbled. “If there is a later.”

* * *

The woods were… noisy. Castiel figured they would be less so for a human, but he could hear everything: the chirping of the bugs, the hooting of the nocturnal birds, the whisper of wind on the branches overhead. And also: the conversations in the cabin, interrupted now and then by Kelly’s cries.

He could also feel the air, vibrating with a new, powerful energy. It was like a storm brewing on the horizon, like a static that he couldn’t shake away. It was almost suffocating to him. This new being was announcing himself to the world, letting everything and everyone know he was coming. He could feel it because he was in so close proximity to it. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that others were sensing it as well.

“So we’re going to have a party down here soon, huh?”

Castiel startled and looked to the side. Meg was sitting on a rock nearby, like it was a throne, with her heads crossed and a smile up in her lips.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I sent you away.”

Her laughter was the cruelest sound.

“Feathers, I live rent free in your head,” she said. “You can’t send me away anymore than you could your own thoughts.”

Her tone was biting now, with none of the loving, soft words she’d said before. Castiel understood. She was malicious now, because he knew she was there to damage him.

He looked away from her.

“Oh, the silent treatment? Really?” she asked. “We really need to work on our communication if we want this relationship to work, you know?”

“Stop,” Castiel said. It was almost a plea.

But of course, she couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop torturing himself with her memory, so why would it stop?

“You can’t really be mad at me,” Meg continued, standing up and walking to stand in front of him. “I am exactly what you wanted me to be.”

“That’s the problem,” Castiel said. “Meg would never hide her thorns to make someone else comfortable. I loved her for who she was, unequivocal, unapologetic. You’re just… a version of her I created to comfort myself. She would hate you.”

“And she wouldn’t hate you because that is the way you saw her?”

“Perhaps. But if she was here, I wouldn’t need you.”

She scoffed and put a hand on her chest.

“Oh, ow. That hurts my feelings.”

“You don’t have feelings.”

“Of course I do,” she said, stepping closer to her. “I _am_ your feelings, Clarence.”

Castiel had nothing to answer to that, so he didn’t.

“We could have been so happy, you and me,” she kept insisting. “But no. You had to believe your friends over me. Honestly, would it have been so different if she had been here? Is there any scenario where you would have honestly chosen her over your human pets?”

“I will never know, will I?”

“Well… you could choose her now.”

He didn’t have to ask what she meant. There was another flickering of energy in the air, and this time it was followed by a flapping of feathers.

Three angels appeared in front of him.

“Indra,” Castiel called them. “Zadkiel. Turiel.”

“Castiel,” Indra replied, taking a step forward. “We don’t want a fight.”

“Oh, is that why they have their weapons out?” Meg pointed out.

It was true. They all had their blades in their hands, and there was hostility in their postures and the way they moved.

“I can’t let you get anywhere close to the child.”

“You should have ended it the moment you knew he was coming,” Turiel told him. She was almost shaking with anger. “You know it’s forbidden.”

“He’s an innocent,” Castiel said. “I won’t hurt him.”

“ _It_ is Lucifer’s child,” Zadkiel replied. “Who knows what kind of monster it’ll grow to be?”

“Monsters aren’t born, brother, they are made. And if he is brought into a world that already hates him and judges him for his parentage, this child will be at risk of becoming one.”

“Yeah, you tell them, Clarence,” Meg encouraged him.

“If he’s treated with love, with compassion… perhaps he will do great things,” Castiel continued, ignoring his hallucination. “I don’t want to fight with you either.”

“But you will to defend it.” Indra’s tone was sad, almost resigned. “Is your death wish really that strong?”

“Yes,” Meg said.

“Just step aside and let us take care of it.”

Castiel looked at them with sadness upon his eyes. They didn’t understand it, of course. They hadn’t loved like he did, they hadn’t lost like he had. He had seen Earth’s wonders and he knew even a demon was capable of great things.

Another pulse of energy, stronger now, went through the air. The child was close.

Castiel raised his blade, defiant.

“Please, brother,” Indra begged him. “Think about this.”

“Clarence…” Meg muttered.

Castiel looked to his side, to notice at least four more angels moving through the trees.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Meg said. “You’ve got lucky too many times. It’s only logical it would runout eventually.”

“See, that’s why you could never be like her,” Castiel answered, as if he hadn’t had enough confirmation yet. “The real Meg would want me to live.”

His siblings frowned and looked to each other, confused by his words.

More flapping in the distance, more rummaging through the trees. Two more. Nine in total and probably more on the way, with how the energy and the power were growing more and more. And the only thing standing between them and the child was Castiel, and the flimsy barrier the sigils had formed.

It would have to be enough.

“Well, I’m all you got right now,” the demon in his head replied. “And I think you’re not fighting for the kid. I think you’re fighting because you’re scared and hurt and alone and want it all to just stop.”

The angels surrounded him, hesitating. Even knowing they had a numeric advantage over him, he was still Castiel. The angel that had been Captain of his garrison. The rebel who’d stood up to Raphael, who’d brough devastation up to Heaven.

“But you don’t want to just give up,” Meg continued saying. “You don’t want to admit to Sam and Dean just how tired you really are. You want to save face and have someone else sink the blade in you. Do I get it right?”

“Yes,” Castiel admitted. “Doesn’t mean I won’t give it my all.”

Her lips curled up in a smirk.

“That’s my boy.”

Turiel attacked first and it was like a dam broke. Suddenly all the angels were swarming him, their eyes glowing with power, their blades glinting in their hands. The noisy woods became even more noisy with the sounds of their grunts and their wings flapping in the air.

Castiel responded blindly, slashing and stabbing, leaning backwards to avoid punches and charging with his whole body to tackle one to the ground, rolling over and standing up to face the next one. His grace thrummed in his veins, coming alive from the thrill of the fight. He let out a battle cry and sank his blade on the nearest neck, ignoring the flashing light of the death of one of his brothers —another one, he didn’t even know which one anymore and didn’t care— before turning towards the next.

The cabin was alight with a golden fulgor the spilled through its windows, through the cracks between the logs, beneath the door, any space that it could fill.

And Castiel knew that the child had arrived, and so did every angel fighting for him, every angel that had their attention turned towards Earth.

He stumbled on the corpse of one oh his siblings. The sleeve of his trench coat felt heavy and wet and he barely had time for realizing it was because it was soaked in blood. Not his, at least he though, but there was a dull pain on his shoulder and wound on his side, leaking grace.

Four bodies on the ground, and none of them had reached the barrier. The other five surrounded him, carefully moving around him like hyenas about to jump on him.

“Not too shabby,” Meg said passing over the corpses of the fallen angels as if they meant nothing to her. They didn’t. Nothing did.

Castiel breathed in deeply, ignoring the pain on his side. Ignoring the metallic taste of blood in his mouth.

“Come on,” he defied them. “There’s only one of me.”

The other angels didn’t attack. Some of them even moved backwards.

The air was saturated now with the golden glow of the cabin. So different from the cold, silver power of their own graces, and yet familiar enough.

And the barrier behind him fluctuated and blinked. Castiel didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know there were angels from other sides of the cabin trying to knock it down, and the ones standing in front of him were just trying to distract him from them.

“Why aren’t dumb and dumber using the blood sigils?” Meg asked. She sounded exasperated.

Castiel knew why. They didn’t want him to be blasted away, too.

He looked over his shoulder, ever so slightly.

The light of the cabin was enough that he could see their faces pressed against the window’s glass, the frown of concern on their brows, the fear.

The barrier blinked again, their power weaking at the assault.

And then, like a bell ringing in the air, a single scream that split the night, followed by a cry that made the entire woods shiver.

The Nephilim was there.

The angels attacked again.

This time, Castiel wasn’t as strong as before. His wounds were taking a toll, but he still raised his weapon and fought, he still slashed and pushed, and let his own grace clash against the ones who sought to move past him, planted like a tree and…

It was Indra’s blade that did it.

It sunk between his ribs, missing his heart by only an inch.

Someone screamed out his name.

Indra’s face was almost remorseful as he held the hilt.

“I’m sorry, brother,” he told him. “You made your choice.”

“And he would choose it again, you self-righteous winged bastard,” Meg whispered in his ear.

Castiel couldn’t speak. The blood was filling his lungs and his grace was rapidly leaking out through his skin; the light that kept him animated, that was him, dwindling the second Indra took his blade out.

He never hit the floor. Not on the woods around the cabin, at least.

The force of the sigil pushed him away through the air and a second later, he landed on harsh cement.

“Clarence,” Meg muttered by his side. “Oh, Clarence, look at his mess.”

Castiel couldn’t look anywhere, except at the stars over his head, burning in the space lights away from where he laid in the middle of an anonymous road, alone and agonizing.

“You’re not alone. Shh. I’m here with you.”

_Meg._

“Yes. I’m here. I’m right here.”

_Stay._

“Of course. I’m not going anywhere. Castiel. Baby. Are you listening? I’m here.”

It was a lie. Just a figment of his imagination. His longing for her come to life.

But he hoped, wherever he was going now, that he would find her there.

The stars all went out at once.

* * *

“Claire Novak?”

Claire stood up at the same time as the brothers. The medical examiner eyed them up.

“They’re friends of the family,” Claire explained. “I would like to have them here with me.”

The doctor nodded and lead them down the hallway towards the small morgue.

“We found him on the road. We suspected he might have been a hit and run at first, but there were bruises in his body consisting with a physical altercation and the cause of death was a stab to the chest.” He stopped and looked at her again. “I’m sorry. I’m used to…”

“It’s fine,” Claire assured him.

The examiner swallowed.

“Your father… he was reported missing nine years ago, right?”

“That sounds about right,” she told him. “But, he, uh… came back into my life a couple of years ago. Just never got around letting police now, you know?”

She wasn’t playing the grieving daughter exactly the way the medical examiner was expecting, but he took one look at the two very tall men flanking her and made the choice to keep quiet about it. Smart guy.

He pulled the gurney out and removed the blanket that covered his face.

Castiel looked strange laying there on the gurney, pale and cold. He looked somehow smaller without his trench coat and despite the ugly coloring of the autopsy stitches, he seemed… almost peaceful.

Dean felt a lump forming in his throat. He was hoping, when he planted his palm open over the sigil, that it hadn’t been too late. That the blade he’d seen the other angel sink into Cas hadn’t reached anything important, that he would be able to expel all the angels and give Jody and Donna time to run with the baby.

Well, many things had gone wrong.

For starters, the baby… wasn’t really a baby.

And then, a few days later, Claire had called him.

“They’re saying they found my dad’s body,” she informed them.

She hadn’t sounded particularly affected by that. But now, standing in front of the body, her voice broke a little when she said:

“Yes, that’s him.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Novak,” the medical examiner said, with the professional calm of a man who had seen too many relatives break down crying in his morgue. “My preliminary report is done, so his body will be released to you as soon as you sign all the forms.”

“Thank you. Uh… can we have a moment with him?”

“Yes, absolutely. I’ll be right by the door if you need me.”

He offered her a sympathetic smile and then headed out. Claire waited until the door closed behind him to ask:

“What the hell happened, guys?”

“We’re wondering the same thing,” Sam said. “He had them. He was fighting them off and then he just…”

“Well, at least he went down swinging.” Claire sighed and looked away. Dean pretended he didn’t see how she quickly wiped her eyes with her jacket’s sleeve. “And the… the baby?”

“Well, that’s complicated,” Dean said. “Jody and Donna were driving him back to the bunker. They should be there by now. Uh… a lot of crazy stuff went down that night.”

“I’ll bet.” Claire stretched her hand, as if she was about to touch Castiel’s face, but at the last moment, she changed her mind and let it fall by her side. “So… what are we going to do with him?”

Sam and Dean looked at each other, wondering the same thing. A hunter’s pyre or cremation was the most appropriate thing. They had given Kelly one earlier, and Castiel had, of course, more than earned one after everything he’d done for them, for humanity.

But of course, there was no spirit to set free. Castiel had barely been tied to Earth to begin with and now…

Where did angels go when they died?

“I think maybe a burial would be okay,” Sam said. “I don’t know, maybe it’d be nice to have a place to… visit him, maybe.”

“Yeah. I agree,” Claire said.

They drove her back to the motel where they were all staying and decided to go get some beers and burgers for dinner. Dean definitely felt like getting drunk that night.

“It’s gonna be a long year,” he commented.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. He didn’t have to say much more. Dean knew he was also fighting off the impulse to scream about how unfair it all was.

They stopped by the car for a moment, watching as the sun set in the horizon.

“Where do you think he is now?” Dean asked. He didn’t need to clarify who he meant.

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows.” Sam made a pause. “Wherever it is, though… I hope…”

“Yeah. Me too.”

They were hoping he was with Meg, after all.


End file.
